COMPOSERS OF OUR TIME

The versatile musician Christian WEGSCHEIDER (*1965), teacher and composer, began his career self-taught on his father's home organ with foot bass and rhythm machine. He received his first piano lessons at music school, and came into contact with jazz through a jazz record he was given as a present. From 1987 to 1993 he studied jazz piano at the University of Music in Graz, before continuing his studies for a year in New York „to find out where the bar is set in jazz“. Since then he has worked as a freelance musician and part-time teacher. For some time now he has also devoted himself intensively to compositional exploration, writing for various ensembles: jazz piano trio, big band, choir, various chamber music, and theatre music for numerous productions, most recently „Tannöd“ (Landestheater Innsbruck, 2008)

With „Walzerpsychose“ Christian WEGSCHEIDER took on a very special challenge: no work has been known so far for chamber orchestra with a solo ensemble made up of a salon orchestra. All the more exciting, then, is his approach to this unusual combination, which WEGSCHEIDER uses as the programmatic impulse for his composition, for as he himself puts it: „In Austria a salon orchestra brings to mind certain clichés, such as the waltz, the monarchy, Vienna's high society. This society passes the time with life's pleasures, is terribly interested in court gossip and fails to notice how steep its decline is. That was the case under the monarchy and seems to be repeating itself today in the air-kissing, early-evening-soap society. This is the guiding thread of the composition. The salon orchestra stands for high society with its casually decadent everyday life, the chamber orchestra for the passing of time. Despite fierce resistance, the former does not manage to avoid its downfall!“
To bring the Viennese tone even more to life, he includes two narrators.

Christian Wegscheider's website:
www.christianwegscheider.com

PRESS
TIROLER TAGESZEITUNG (20 October 2008)
SHIMMERING AFRICA AND THE WALTZ'S JOURNEY THROUGH TIME
…. Christian WEGSCHEIDER unveiled his „Walzerpsychose“. The chamber orchestra …
was joined by a salon ensemble and narrators (WEGSCHEIDER himself and Susanne SCHARTNER), who indulged in posh, trendy poses….. Mahleresque fading salon waltzes, a craving for gossip and a volcanic dance flow into a rhythmically driven, sonically full-bodied journey through time from 1900 to 2008, revealing that times change, but mentalities only marginally, and that events repeat themselves.