Porträt Ernst Křenek

»I have no recipe for immortality, and I don’t think there is one. I can only say that anyone who grasps an opportunity has a chance.« The Viennese composer Ernst Krenek (1900-1991) definitely knew how to make the most of opportunities. Yet his oeuvre continues to await discovery. Producing almost 250 compositions in all genres plus numerous publications as a music theorist and journalist, some of them written in German, some in English – he went into exile in the USA in 1938, becoming an American citizen in 1945 – the evercurious Krenek helped to create or aesthetically reflected almost all the artistic positions of his times. Whether contemporary 1920s opera – his jazz opera ›Jonny spielt auf‹ has remained legendary to this day – or dodecaphony, serialism or extended sinus tones. Krenek’s ears witnessed his times, and his music is as heterogeneous as the 20th century itself. In its ›Happy New Ears‹ concert on June 21, 2017 at the Frankfurt Opera, Ensemble Modern once again delves into the cosmos of Ernst Krenek, performing the Zweite ›Symphonische Musik für 9 Solo-Iinstrumente‹. Lothar Zagrosek will conduct the concert and also join the Krenek expert Claudia Maurer-Zenck as a featured guest in the conversation moderated by hr2 music journalist Stefan Fricke.