The ICMA – International Classical Music Awards – has named Austrian composer Christoph Ehrenfellner Composer of the Year 2025. Ursula Magnes, who represents Radio Klassik Stephansdom on the ICMA jury, asked the « rebel against intolerance » (according to the international jury) a few questions.
What was your first composition?
My opus 1 was « Amores », Ovid’s love poems for string quartet and voice. I sang the premiere in 2005 myself, improvising spontaneously and painting my own stage sets. My mother sat at a light lever at the time and we put on a fully staged performance, so to speak. People were thrilled. A first attempt and an immediate kick into the world of creation!
As a 25-year-old, you immediately took up Ovid. Is there a humanist in you?
Yes, there is a humanist in me, quite decidedly. A real philanthropist and a lover of art! Latin was important at my private Catholic grammar school and fascinated me. The references to antiquity and the Renaissance are very, very fertile sources for me. Crazily enough, I believe that I really am proof incarnate that the narratives of the 20th century, as far as art and music history are notoriously concerned, simply need to be questioned and reconsidered.
Do I hear skepticism about a ‘new music police’?
It started in my mother’s church choir in Hennndorf am Wallersee in Salzburg – at the age of five, at funerals and weddings. It continued with the Vienna Boys’ Choir, in the Vienna State Opera with Plácido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti in the greatest, most glorious times. As a mature musician, at some point I got into the creative side, i.e. into writing. This difference in my biography automatically predestined me to be a bridge builder between the traditional world and the avant-garde. And now, of course, it’s strange to say something like that in 2025, when there has been an avant-garde for more than 100 years that says it is avant-garde. And you ask yourself, where did this separation happen? And there are also these wild rebels who have broken up something, had to invent something new and so on. It’s not about ideology, it’s about efficiency. And I couldn’t get away from this point of ideological separation with the tonality, to think and try again. I’m certainly not at the end. This is my journey. And that is also one of my truly crystallized credos, where music is there to comfort, to uplift, to bring together, to give joy and strength. I am absolutely convinced that music is essential for this.
Of course, that sounds a bit like ‘healthy music’…
I simply believe that we are one chapter further in the history of mankind and art. Most of us have a regular job and a regular income and health and pension insurance. I don’t believe that they are therefore happy all round, that all issues are taken care of, that they don’t need comfort, joy or inspiration. On the contrary! In our saturated societies, it is even more important to really fill the drought of the soul with fresh water. And you have to say, how does music work and what is water? And I can define that relatively precisely and accurately. After 30 years on stage and with the entire history of music in my fingers and in my voice, I know well enough what is water and what is dust.
What makes your music special? Can you put it into words?
Years ago, I once said with a wink that I am a classicist in the modern music. Emphasis on ‘in’! You can feel where that comes from in every bar of my music. It wants this origin and loves tradition. There’s absolutely no reason to bash this tradition in any way, because for me, tradition per se is something incredibly positive. But in an environment where it’s sold as the new, all the time, which has actually been repeated for 100 years, someone like me is a rebel. It doesn’t help if I have a Ferrari like the Vienna Philharmonic in my orchestra garage, and I say I think it’s great now, we’re all just going to drive around in reverse, because we’ve driven forwards enough. That’s what I’ve experienced as a musician for 30 years and I offer real alternatives to that.
Do you see yourself in the same tradition as Alban Berg?
Very much so. So much so that I now see my fourth opera Karl and Anna op. 48, which premiered at the Mainfranken Theater Würzburg in April 2024, as a kind of – well, I was simply inspired by Wozzeck. Not that I copied anything from it, but I have this way of actually working and thinking serialistically, i.e. with rows, but with a freedom and sensuality of sound that is absolutely oriented towards efficiency, towards it having a musical-theatrical effect. I use everything that has proven to be useful in domestic opera culture. Wagner’s leitmotif technique, serialism, Alban Berg’s free poetry. I continue to build with it and make my own. So why shouldn’t I use it? So I can give my audience a deep pleasure.
Christoph Ehrenfellner
That means you’ve never composed for the drawer in your life?
Never. Every piece has a commission. My first one was commissioned by me. But that was the only one. All the others are commissions.
Did you have classical composition lessons?
I went to Prof. Christian Minkowitsch’s class at the Vienna Conservatory, when I had already written my first opera. He threw up his hands and said, « For God’s sake, it’s all in three-four time. You can’t be serious. » And I said, I’m quite serious. And you’ll see – my opus 7, the chamber opera Mae Mona was my first big opera success. Four different newspapers dubbed it a sensation and so it went on. My second was also a great opera success, as was my third and my fourth. So, what can I say? I’m already on the right track. The response shows that.
Right and wrong music…
That is something very difficult for art. After my experiences as a singer, violinist and conductor, I had to find my way. And perhaps fortunately for me, that path led to composition. In relation to my music: when you decide on a theme, it has consequences. Some themes are suitable for this, others for something else. If you take a fateful path with a theme, you may need it or have the energy to hit the wall. Other things you leave in a rose garden for yourself.
Where do you currently see your catalog of works?
I’m currently working on my opus 63 for the ICMA Gala in Düsseldorf. I have written 62 works, some of them very extensive, four operas, three symphonies, a ballet, three string quartets, chamber music, theater music, all kinds of things. And I have always taken a very classical approach. One word has become the quintessence for me: Efficiency. So as long as we are sitting in a classical concert hall and have a classical ensemble to serve, it’s all about classical storytelling. Because there’s an audience sitting there, they pay an entrance fee and they have an hour and a half in which to listen to something. They pay for it. Yes, if I don’t say anything in that hour and a half or say something they don’t understand or can’t understand, what do they get out of it? So I’ve become very strict in the course of my life as a musician, to say, look, this is the framework. When I make sound combinations, I don’t need to have Vienna Philharmonic musicians sitting there, who have worked their whole lives to get a beautiful sound out of a violin, because I can explain to someone in 20 minutes how to get something like that out of a violin. It’s by no means just about what has traditionally crystallized as good and beautiful and true.
Where can I place you artistically?
I don’t know, there are hardly any words for it. The music-loving Prince Paul Esterházy had Joseph Haydn play for him every evening. He couldn’t suddenly scrape something out for him and say, but this is art now. It had to sound good. I don’t want to single out Paul Esterházy as the authority for all art, but that’s how the game has worked for centuries. It simply wasn’t superfluous for us to have symphony orchestras. It was not superfluous for us to have opera houses. It has not been superfluous for us to play Beethoven. I would say for very good reason.
The ICMA jury has named you « Composer of the Year ». You will be conducting your new piece yourself at the gala on March 19 at the Tonhalle in Düsseldorf. What can we expect?
I have called it Wiener Blut 200. It’s a hug to Johann Strauss and the 200th birthday we’re celebrating in 2025. What I really like to do is bring roses from Vienna when I go somewhere else. Because I see that nobody else does that. One of my key works is Ravel’s La Valse – the apotheosis of the Viennese waltz, so to speak, and at the same time its downfall and swan song. This will be a bouquet of roses from Vienna, a bravura piece inspired by Ravel’s La Valse. The Düsseldorfer Symphoniker will be able to display their full range of colors.
How full is your order book?
I’m not fully booked until 2030, but what’s very interesting is that in the almost 20 years I’ve been traveling the world as a composer, I haven’t had a week where I haven’t had a commission or work. A year on, it’s almost as if I don’t know what to do first. And it’s both a good feeling and an invitation to continue on this path.
From composer to violinist Ehrenfellner: Which musicians from the past would you like to play string quartets with?
I would give so much that I could have played with David Oistrakh once. His sound on the violin is one of the most delightful and greatest things for me. I would have loved to have played with Jacques Thibaud. I think that would have been a musician with whom I could have shared a lot. I would have loved to have sat on the podium with Sándor Végh, whose grandchild I am through my violin teacher Gerhard Schulz. It’s more difficult with the viola. Probably with Paul Hindemith. That would have been incredibly appealing to me. We would probably have been a wild team.
