Wolfgang Mitterer, twice awarded the Austrian Film Prize in the “Best Music” category and one of the most accomplished and experimental composers of the present, has set this psychological drama to music on behalf of the Wiener Konzerthaus, the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg and the Ensemble PHACE.

Mitterer studied organ, composition and electroacoustics in Vienna and Stockholm. He is one of the Austrian specialists for electronics and an innovative composer. His work oscillates between composition and open forms. Apart from music for organ and orchestra, a piano concerto and an opera he produced electronic pieces, conceptualised sound installations, and collective improvisations with diverse groups, developing a language of extremes, tension and complexity. The pleasure he takes in experimenting leads him to combine contrasting elements in the creation of unpredictable musical events. In one composition, for instance, he juxtaposes musical bands and children’s choirs with specialized instrumentalists and singers, while filling the hall with surround sound created by live electronics. But his work transcends the merely spectacular, precisely because of his musical presence and the high – deeply moving – intensity and complexity of his compositions. Listening intensely to low sounds has its place just as much as the “installing” of exploding sound fragments in the listeners’ minds. Far from being smoothly pleasurable, Mitterer’s music is still uncannily beautiful at times.