EUROPEAN WORKSHOP FOR CONTEMPORARY MUSIC

evolved out of the former Polish-German Ensemble Workshop for Contemporary Music, initiated in 2003 by the German Music Council (Deutscher Musikrat) and the Warsaw Autumn Festival. The workshop has two major objectives: firstly, to support young musicians interested in training in special techniques of contemporary music and wanting to familiarise themselves with contemporary repertoire; and secondly, to promote cultural exchange and artistic integration between the two countries as well as cooperation with the entire musical Europe. 

The first workshop in 2003 focused on a meeting of the Kwartludium ensemble from Warsaw with young German musicians. After many days of rehearsals, the ensemble, led by Rüdiger Bohn, appeared in concert at the Warsaw Autumn Festival, presenting contemporary works from Poland and Germany. The performance, at the Polish Radio’s Witold Lutosławski Concert Studio, featured premieres of works written especially for the occasion. The ideas of first performances of works by young composers from the two countries was continued in 2006 and 2007, also thanks to commissions from the German Radio (Deutschlandfunk). Thus new and lesser-known works became part of the ensemble’s repertoire. 

Today its repertoire includes works by Helmut Lachenmann, Wolfgang Rihm, Matthias Spahlinger, André Werner, Iannis Xenakis and Witold Lutosławski as well as Joanna Woźny, Aleksander Szczetyński, and Lubava Sidorenko. 

The ensemble appeared at the Ultraschall Festival in Berlin and the international composers’ workshop Buckower Begegnungen, Contrasts Festival in Lviv, Milano Musica, Baltic Sea Festival in Stockholm, Tonlagen in Dresden, Forum Neuer Musik in Cologne, Polish–German festival of modern neighbourship Neighbours 2.0 organised by the German Embassy and the Goethe Institute in Warsaw. Invited by the Berlin Academy of Arts, in October 2011 it presented works by young Polish composers under the Blickwechsel project. 

In August 2014 the ensemble took part for the first time in the International Summer Courses for New Music in Darmstadt. In 2015, during rehearsals at the architecturally unique Kolumba Kunstmuseum in Cologne, the musicians reacted to diverse spatial characteristics of the museum, developing an idiosyncratic concert dramaturgy. 

After fruitful cooperation with the Cracow Academy of Music between 2013 and 2015, in 2016 and 2017 the European Workshop took place at the Academy of Music in Łódź. In addition to giving concerts in Łódź and Warsaw, the EWCM also appeared at the Luxembourg Philharmonic Hall. is year the EWCM will take place at the Music Academy in Wrocław for the second time.