For Those Who Dared

Experiments Across Generations

OVERVIEW

Curiosity and courage do not begin with us. Every musical experiment inherits something from those who were willing to question conventions before us—to listen differently, rethink an instrument, challenge established forms, or imagine new relationships between performer, sound, and technology. For Those Who Dared pays tribute to that courage while celebrating experimentation as an ongoing practice.

At the heart of the evening is György Kurtág, celebrated in 2026 on the occasion of his 100th birthday. Rather than appearing in a single commemorative block, Kurtág’s music returns throughout the programme through Játékok and Signs, Games and Messages: brief musical thoughts, gestures, homages, and encounters placed among works by composers of different generations.

Around them, percussion becomes a field of rhythm, material, resonance, and colour; sound expands into live electronics and moving image; a drum set meets electronics and video; a learning software agent enters into real-time interaction with an electric guitarist; and written structures create conditions for collective improvisation. The evening looks back with respect, but not nostalgia—honouring those who opened possibilities before us while listening for where musical experimentation might lead next.

PROGRAM

Dance on a Pinpoint — Jingyan Li

             For oboe, violin, viola, cello, percussion, and piano

Rogosanti — James Wood

              For solo percussion

Selections from Signs, Games and Messages — György Kurtág

              For viola

Fluid Assemblages — Goeun Kim

               For live electronics, live video, and multichannel electronics

The sketch of white scene — Xinlin Li

               For oboe, violin, cello, percussion, and piano

Selections from Játékok : Shared Keys — György Kurtág

               For piano

Assonance VII — Michael Jarrell

               For solo percussion

 Selections from Signs, Games and Messages — György Kurtág

              For solo oboe

                              Einen Augenblick lang … (1997–98)

                              Hommage à Elliott Carter

                                                                           I. Capriccio (1998)

                                                                           II. Arioso

                                  … ein Brief aus der Ferne an Ursula … (2014)

Selections from Játékok : Poetic Whispers — Voice & Piano — György   Kurtág

                     For voice and string instrument(s)

Delusional State — Grigorii Osipov

                      For drum set, live electronics, and video

Selections from Játékok : Infinite Playground — György Kurtág

                      For piano

Tertiary Protentions II — For Guitar and Musical Agent System — Nicola       Leonard Hein

                       For electric guitar, musical agent system, live video, and multichannel electronics

Codex IV — Richard Barrett

                        For ensemble

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Dance on a Pinpoint — Jingyan Li

Jingyan Li’s Dance on a Pinpoint is presented at PGVIS for oboe, violin, viola, cello, percussion, and piano.

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Rogosanti — James Wood

Composed in 1986 for percussionist Steven Schick, James Wood’s Rogosanti connects percussion with ritual and healing functions found in several Asian traditions. Its title derives from a Sanskrit term associated with healing or the quietening of disease.

Wood constructs the piece through contrasting instrumental and rhythmic domains. One brings together drums and wooden instruments and incorporates the North Indian rhythmic cell Ata Trisra (3+3+2+2); another centres on metal instruments. These contrasting materials form an important part of the work’s structure, allowing percussion to be heard not simply through impact or virtuosity, but through rhythm, resonance, material, and relationships between different percussion traditions.

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Kurtág at 100

Throughout tonight’s programme, the music of György Kurtág returns between works by composers of different generations. In the year of his 100th birthday, these recurring appearances form a tribute not through a single retrospective statement, but through repeated encounters with a musical practice that has remained closely connected to concentration, experimentation, play, and personal communication.

Kurtág’s Játékok—Games—grew from an exploration of the piano and the possibilities of musical learning, while Signs, Games and Messages gathers short works whose very title points toward three recurring qualities in Kurtág’s musical world: signs, acts of play, and personal messages.

Tonight these works appear in different instrumental forms—piano, viola, oboe, voice, and strings. The programme includes Einen Augenblick lang …, Hommage à Elliott Carter with Capriccio and Arioso, and … ein Brief aus der Ferne an Ursula …, alongside three groups from Játékok. Rather than separating the centenary tribute from the rest of the concert, Kurtág’s music is woven through an evening that places different generations of musical experimentation side by side.

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Fluid Assemblages — Goeun Kim

Goeun Kim’s Fluid Assemblages is a 2026 audiovisual and electronic work, originally conceived as an audiovisual performance.

For PGVIS, the work is presented through live electronics, live video, and multichannel electronics, bringing electronic sound and moving image together within a live performance environment.

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The sketch of white scene — Ayisi

Xinlin Li The sketch of white scene is presented at PGVIS for oboe, violin, cello, percussion, and piano.

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Assonance VII — Michael Jarrell

Michael Jarrell composed Assonance VII in 1992 for solo percussion. Lasting approximately eleven minutes, the work explores the more subtle and restrained possibilities of percussion through differences of colour, pitch, and resonance.

An early vibraphone passage establishes pitch landmarks that are subsequently transformed. Jarrell develops relationships between fixed-pitch instruments—including vibraphone, gongs, and crotales—and less determinate or unpitched percussion such as tam-tams and cymbals. Percussion becomes a field of sonority in which timbre and resonance carry structural weight alongside rhythm.

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Delusional State — Grigorii Osipov

In Delusional State, composer-performer Grigorii Osipov brings together drum set, live electronics, and video in a single performance environment.

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Tertiary Protentions II  — Nicola Leonard Hein

In Tertiary Protentions II, Nicola Leonard Hein’s electric guitar enters into a real-time relationship with a software agent capable of learning the musician’s gestures and idioms as the performance unfolds.

Hein describes this relationship through the concept of “cybernetic listening.” Human and machine form an integrated musical system in which listening, action, and agency circulate through feedback. Their interaction extends into an intelligently acting multichannel environment with autonomous spatialisation and live video. Onstage, the projected avatar of the musical agent appears approximately human-sized opposite Hein, positioning musician and digital agent almost like two members of a duo facing one another.

The title refers directly to philosopher Bernard Stiegler and to the idea of the future conceived through technology. Here, that relationship to the future is explored through a musical system that learns, listens, responds, and changes in real time.

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Codex IV — Richard Barrett

Richard Barrett’s codex IV, composed in 2004–06, is an improvisational structure originally conceived for nine players. It belongs to Barrett’s wider codex project, which occupies the territory between composition and improvisation.

Rather than determining every musical event, the written material establishes structures and conditions that direct performers’ attention, decisions, and interactions. Individual musicians retain agency, while the score encourages them to enter musical relationships and situations that may not arise through their habitual improvisational behaviour. Listening and collective responsiveness therefore become central to how the music takes shape.

For PGVIS, codex IV is realised by an expanded ensemble that includes folk instruments, placing Barrett’s improvisational structure within the particular group of musicians assembled for this performance.

PERFORMERS / COMPOSERS

Studio Musikfabrik

Peter Veale — Oboe / Conductor/ Artistic Director

Alexander Kronbichler — Oboe

Mia-Nurten Köseoglu — Viola

Hochschule der Künste Bern

Teresa Carrasco — Musical Direction

Musikhochschule Lübeck

Nicola Leonard Hein — Composer / Sound Arts / Music Director

Grigorii Osipov — Percussion & Electronics

Goeun Kim — Composer / Sound Arts

Seoul National University (SNU)

Eunsam Lee — Soprano

Jinhyeok Park — Piano

China Conservatory of Music (CCM)

Wang Fei — Faculty / Composer

Jingyan LiLi Jing — Composer / Piano

Borjigin·T·Ayas (AYISI) — Composer

Xinlin Li — Composer

Princess Galyani Vadhana Institute of Music (PGVIM)

Pun Petra — Piano

Sutasinee Wongjindasak — Piano

Wachiraphat Nueangmatcha - Tuba

Yotsatat Huttakijvilai - Trombone

Tanus Wongsopa - Trumpet

Chaianan Thomprom – French Horn

Vichyavich Pauriputra - Percussion

Siraphat Chomphupol - Percussion

Kasidet somman - Percussion

Don Winyachai - Percussion

Aparat Mungthong - Voice

Pluksapon Poungnoi - Percussion

Thanakorn Permpoon - Percussion

Nawanthon Kamsuwanno - Tuba

Tonboon Jaroenphol - Percussion

Nuttawat Sangthong - Percussion

Lert Lertwongwanich - Piano

Natthakit Athichaithanakul – French Horn