Continuum XXI
Ensemble Modern
hr-Bigband
hr-Sinfonieorchester
IEMA-Ensemble 2025/26
Synergy Vocals
Trondheim Voices
Alberto Arroyo
Hed Bahack
Sylvain Cambreling
Helena Cánovas Parés
Pia Davila
Caio de Azevedo
Justine Emard
Bernard Foccroulle
Georg Friedrich Haas
John Hollenbeck
Eloain Lovis Hübner
Justė Janulytė
Michael Jarrell
Malika Kishino
Eungjin Lee
Lucie Leguay
Leon Liang
Brad Lubman
Sarah Nemstov
Felicitas Magdalena Pfaus
Julian Prégardien
Steve Reich
Diego Ramos Rodríguez
Rebecca Saunders
Yixie Shen
Miroslav SRNKA
Toby Thatcher
Thierry Tidrow
Stefan Weiller
Adriane Westerbarkey
Haotian Yu
Artist
© Stefan FuhrerGeorg Friedrich Haas
Georg Friedrich Haas was born in Graz, but spent his childhood in the mountains of Vorarlberg – a landscape and atmosphere which influenced him profoundly. He studied in his native city with Ivan Eröd and Gösta Neuwirth and later in Vienna with Friedrich Cerha. The latter nominated his former student for the Grand Austrian State Prize, which Haas received in 2007.
Night, darkness and a loss of illusions play a great role in his oeuvre (for example in his Hölderlin opera ›Nacht‹ (Night), 1995/1998), while light has also acquired significant importance, playing an integral role in several of his compositions (for example ›in vain‹ of 2000 and especially in ›Hyperion‹, a concerto for light and orchestra, 2006).
Georg Friedrich Haas is internationally renowned and recognized as a highly sensitive, imaginative researcher of the inner worlds of sounds. With very few exceptions (of which his Violin Concerto of 1998 is one), he writes microtonal pieces in which a magical sonic world sweeps the listener away, inebriated.
Haas has thoroughly studied microtonality (inspired by Ivan Wyschnegradsky and Alois Hába) and has lectured on it in several European countries. For the 1999 Salzburg Festival, he undertook an »attempt at a synopsis of microtonal composition techniques« entitled ›Beyond the Twelve Semitones‹.
Both the Cello Concerto and ›Wer, wenn ich schrie, hörte mich…‹ (If I cried out, who would hear me…) of 1999 for percussion and ensemble reflect Haas’s political commitment and his bitter realisation of his helplessness as a composer: there is no way his music could serve to improve the world. The Percussion Concerto was written at the time of the Balkan war; when Haas heard aeroplanes flying overhead carrying their deadly burden, he asked himself whether anyone could hear him, if he were to cry out in protest against the war. The Cello Concerto begins with a scream in unbearable pain, followed by a section where the drumbeat conjures up the march rhythm of the Prussian army: a plea against fascism.