Time 8pm
Venue Second Home Britannia House, 68-80 Hanbury St, Spitafields E1 5JL
Tickets £10
Programme
Richard Wagner / Leon Michener Improvisations on Der Ring des Nibelungen (1869-1874)
Johannes Kreidler Fremdarbeit (Outsourcing) (2009)
Luigi Nono ... sofferte onde serene ... (1976)
Cornelius Cardew Red Flag Prelude (1973)
Performers
Mark Knoop piano (Nono, Cardew), conductor (Kreidler)
Leon Michener piano
Lucy Railton cello
Serge Vuille percussion
Kerry Yong sampler
Music and global capitalism: for the artists featured in this programme, the interlacing of these two themes has been a central concern.
Richard Wagner is sometimes considered the first musical Marxist, with Der Ring des Nibelungen tracing its story around a critique of financial greed. In the mid 20th century, political upheavals led both Luigi Nono and Cornelius Cardew to see music as a platform for anti-capitalist agitation.
Two currently active artists who have turned their attention to today's networks of power and wealth are Kuwaiti composer and producer Fatima Al Qadiri (pictured below) and German composer Johannes Kreidler (pictured above). While Kreidler's Fremdarbeit (Outsourcing) offers a blistering critique of contemporary culture, Al Qadiri's darkly compelling futurism draws on the impersonal sonic vocabularies of corporate culture and hi-tech, commodified club genres.
