The Holland Festival presents Hyena, in which Mollena Lee Williams-Haas talks about how she kicked off her alcohol addiction. Her husband Georg Friedrich Haas wrote the music to accompany her blood-curdling account. She is accompanied by Klangforum Wien and conductor Bas Wiegers, who also performed the world premiere two years ago. Hyena can be heard once on Wednesday 13 June in Music Building on the IJ.
Here in the country, Georg Friedrich Haas (Graz, 1953) is still no household name. We know him mainly for in vain, christened the 'first masterpiece of the 21st century' by Simon Rattle. Internationally, Haas is considered one of the most important composers of our time. Authoritative American music critic Alex Ross praises his flair for theatrical gestures and sumptuous sound sculptures. He considers the Austrian a bridge builder between European and American musical traditions.
Microtones
Haas likes to work with microtones (tones that lie between the piano's 12 white and black keys). He forms a link between experimental Americans like Harry Partch and La Monte Young and French spectralists like Tristan Murail and Hugues Dufourt. Romantic gestures stand alongside expressionist exclamations without crumbling into a fragmentary soundscape. His elongated structures vaguely recall Morton Feldman, whose Rothko Chapel sounded at the Holland Festival's opening concert.
Haas composed in vain in 2000 out of anger and powerlessness over the formation of a government coalition between the far-right Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs and the Österreichische Volkspartei. This also explains the title: in vain means 'in vain'. It also refers to the term 'vanitas', the Latin word with which the art world designates a certain type of still life. The skulls, extinguished candles, half-decayed instruments and wilted flowers depicted in such paintings represent the vanity, transience and meaninglessness of earthly existence.
In vain is set for 24 instruments and a lighting technician. Light forms an inseparable part of the piece. Twice it is extinguished during the performance, plunging both musicians and audience into total darkness. Then the performers play by heart, so that the conductor becomes redundant and does his work 'in vain'. Moreover, Haas plays a game with our expectations as motifs seem to rise and fall simultaneously. A reference to the useless stairs in Maurits Escher's lithograph Ascending and descending.
Hyena
In 2013, Haas met Mollena Lee Williams, writer, singer, actress, storyteller and bondage-SM instructor. She entered into a master-slave relationship with him and tapped new creativity in him; they married in 2015. Beatrice Behn and René Gebhard made a documentary about the unlikely couple, The Artist and the Pervert. This was seen on 12 June in the Boilerhouse. Whereas Haas struggled for years with his (grand)parents' Nazi past, Williams had once hit the booze. An inner devil made her reach for the bottle again and again. Until she realised she was literally drinking herself to death and decided to kick the habit.
After a leaden battle, Williams overcame her alcohol addiction. She had the date of her departure from rehab tattooed on the inside of her wrist: 3-14-07. The chances of relapse were huge, according to her therapist, but she hasn't had a drop since. Indeed, her experience eventually led to the successful production Hyena.
'I didn't really want to write about my alcohol addiction and withdrawal at all,' she said of this. 'It felt far too personal and the story had already been chewed out ad nauseam in the media. But then I was asked to perform at the Porchlight Storytelling Series in San Francisco. I was asked what I wanted to speak about and I immediately thought: at least not about my alcohol addiction. I was terrified of it, and that's precisely why I felt I had to do it.'
Self-destruction in ear-pleasing sounds
Hyena became a resounding success and a podcast made it to US Public Broadcasting. When Haas heard it, he immediately decided to incorporate the lyrics into a concert for ensemble and live storyteller. 'My wife is a professional storyteller,' says Haas. 'I know better than anyone how well she can get a message across and how strong the impact of her personality can be. It was very natural for me to start a joint artistic project from our close private relationship.'
Williams-Haas is a captivating storyteller. She keeps you on the edge of your seat for an hour in Hyena with her unadorned account of her addiction and subsequent withdrawal. Haas composed serving music to accompany it, making the lure of booze palpable with ear-pleasing sounds. The inner devil that drives Williams to despair materialises in her fever dreams as a grimly realistic hyena. 'The sound of the hyena, the voice of self-destruction, must be the most beautiful imaginable,' Haas said of this.
When Williams-Haas narrates that she knocks back a bottle of whisky in three gulps at eight o'clock in the morning, just as many sense-making chords sound. And although Williams-Haas is still fighting her drinking, Hyena ends hopeful. Against a backdrop of hallucinatory sounds, she braves the hyena's call. '.... and she waits for me to lose hope.... but I... will not!'
The sound recording alone is throat-cutting. - Tissues with you!
Good to knowKlangforum Wien / Bas Wiegers / Mollena Williams-Haas
Composer G.F. Haas
Hyena
Sayaka
the terrae fine'
At 19.45 I will give an introduction on foyer deck 1, admission free on presentation of ticket
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