María de Alvear on the German HR-2 radio

The German radio station HR-2 Kultur broadcasts a special on María de Alvear.

Tomorrow, Thursday 26 May at 10 p.m., Hessischer Rundfunk (Hessian Broadcasting), the official German radio and television station of the federal state of Hesse, will broadcast on HR-2 Kultur, its cultural radio station, an extensive programme dedicated to the Spanish-German composer María de Alvear (Madrid, 1960). The programme, entitled Heilung, Liebe, Schönheit. Die Macht der Musik von María de Alvear (Healing, Love, Beauty. The Power of María de Alvear’s Music), has been conducted and will be presented by the German musicologist and journalist Rainer Nonnenmann. The programme can be followed at a later date via the podcast of the channel’s media library.

The hour-long programme will feature excerpts from pieces composed at different times, from En amor duro and Sexo (both dating from 1991) to Open Sunshine (from 2013), including Libertad (from 1998), Vagina (1996), Sexo puro (from 1998), Ur (from 2000) and Flores (from 2003), which will open and close the programme.

As Nonnenmann explains in the programme introduction, “The term ‘music’ is too narrow for María de Alvear’s work. The composer does not only use instruments, sounds, songs and voices. Often texts, space, scene, movement, light and video are also used. Tattoos, paintings, photos, animal bodies and natural objects are also sometimes included. Within the framework of the concept of art expanded by the post-war avant-garde, María de Alvear understands her works less as works of object art than as attempts to transform people, society and the reality of life. Her multidimensional action is not limited to compositions. Rather, the results are multimedia ‘celebrations’, ‘rituals’, ‘meaning games’ or ‘ceremonies’. As global events, they appeal to various senses, break routines and open up new or even old ways of perceiving the self and the world”.

In addition to being heard live or rebroadcast, Nonnenmann’s text will be published in August in an expanded version in issue 174 of the German contemporary music magazine MusikTexte, along with an article by musicologist and WDR 3 Mosaik presenter Raoul Möhrchen on De Alvear’s 2005 piano composition Urbaum.