Iannis Xenakis
Three Days of Music by the Greek Sound Architect
If any composer can be described as »an architect of sound«, then it is Iannis Xenakis. Before the composer, who was born to Greek parents in Rumania in 1922, made music his main occupation, he completed a degree in engineering in Athens. Xenakis often based his later compositions on mathematical, geometric or architectural principles, so that these two art forms exercised a unique influence on one another in his oeuvre. But Xenakis was never simply a »laboratory composer«. Rather, he reflected intensely on how his music was received: »The listener must be grabbed and pulled into the music's trajectory,« he declared. The Elbphilharmonie's Xenakis spotlight offers people the opportunity to be grabbed by his ecstatic compositions in a whole number of concerts.