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© Tina Herzl
La nuda voce, Klangforum Wien, Pomàrico
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 October 2026 | ||||||
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About the series
Portrait FRANCESCA VERUNELLI
For her exploration of sound, Francesca Verunelli (*1979), who inaugurates a new series of contemporary composer portraits at the Salzburg Festival, has been awarded major prizes, including the Silver Lion of the Biennale di Venezia Musica 2010 and the Composition Prize of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation in 2020. After studying in Florence and Rome as well as at IRCAM in Paris, residencies took her to Rome, Madrid, and Marseille. Her intensive artistic research into the interplay between contemporary compositional practice, experimental performance techniques, and modern instrument building led to a growing philosophical and theoretical interest, culminating in a doctorate at the Université Paris Sciences et Lettres. She now teaches at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts.
Francesca Verunelli has received numerous composition commissions, including from the SWR Symphony Orchestra, Klangforum Wien, and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. Her recent composition La nuda voce was premiered in two parts in 2025 at the Donaueschinger Musiktage and Wien Modern. In several works, she explores the human voice as the most primordial musical instrument, its relationship to the body as a resonator, and the presence of song in the absence of the voice. These include the ensemble piece Five Songs (Kafka’s Sirens) (2018) and Songs and Voices (2023). In VicentinoOo (2024), Verunelli, for whom our familiar equal temperament has always been somewhat suspect, experiments with microtonality inspired by Renaissance models. In her compositions, the exploration of the temporal duration of sound and the artistic organization of this temporality play a central role. Composing, Verunelli says, means writing time. Music is the writing of time.
Program and cast
La nuda voce — Klangforum Wien · Pomàrico | Portrait FRANCESCA VERUNELLI | CONCERT
Johanna Vargas - Soprano
Helēna Sorokina - Mezzo-soprano
Hugo Queirós - Contrabass clarinet
Klangforum Wien
Emilio Pomàrico - Conductor
Programme
Gérard Grisey
Anubis, Nout — Two pieces for contrabass clarinet
Talea for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano
Francesca Verunelli
La nuda voce for soprano, mezzo-soprano and ensemble
Stiftung Mozarteum
In 1856, the 100th anniversary of Mozart’s birth, an association was founded with the aim of setting up a music school, with a library, archives and concert hall, devoted to Mozart. Various buildings in the inner city area of Salzburg were considered and eventually it was decided to buy the villa of the former interior minister, Josef von Lasser, in the Schwarzstrasse. Conversion work took place from 1910 to 1914 according to plans drawn up by Richard Berndl. The overriding style is late historicism characteristic of Munich, and elegant details were combined with elements of the local Baroque tradition, art nouveau and patriotic building art. In 1917 the board of governors of the International Mozarteum Foundation elected Bernhard Paumgartner unanimously as director of what was at that time a conservatory. This later became an academy and then the Mozarteum Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, and in the meantime it has achieved university status. During the period when Paumgartner was director, this educational institute experienced a great boom: in particular several music-theatre productions took place in connection with the “Mozarteum Opera Series” and it was thanks to his initiative that these performances took place in the Salzburg City Theatre (now the Landestheater).
Financial problems of the International Mozarteum Foundation were offset by nationalising the teaching part of the foundation’s work in 1922 with the result that nowadays two completely separate corporate bodies exist. The Mozarteum University has in the meantime moved most of its departments into its own building on the Mirabellplatz.
The International Mozarteum Foundation has cooperated closely with the Salzburg Festival ever since 1921: the Great Hall of the Mozarteum is one of the main venues of the concert series especially because it is excellent for the performance of chamber music. The Mozart Matinees, morning concerts given at the weekends during the Salzburg Festival, were introduced by Bernhard Paumgartner and have in the meantime assumed legendary status. In 1930 the first courses for conducting and musical instruments were held and this initiative later became the International Summer Academy of the Mozarteum. Every year renowned lecturers come together with enthusiastic music students from all over the world to enter a lively artistic dialogue.
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