In order to confront this almost euphoric basic attitude Anton Bruckners with present thinking, the organizers dared the experiment to confront the so-called "zeroth" symphony of the Austrian master with a completely new orchestra work by the Darmstadt composer Alois Bröder. His Vingt Moments consist of twenty instants, salient aphorisms of often only few bars which create expectations, stimulate emotion-loaded dialogs and, nevertheless, break off suddenly, often abruptly fade away.
Instead of contrasting these imaginative tonally never injuring miniatures with the early symphony by Bruckner, the concert zipper-like interlocked both works, so that the four symphonic movements were broken open and obtained a remarkable interrelation with the contemporary music. Thus appeared an astonishing proximity between familiar musical language and modern sound area technology, but also a sharp contrast in the respective time feeling.
The audience appreciated this informative program idea, the successful premiere of the composer from their twin town as well as the engaged achievement of all involved ones in this evening with a lot of applause.
Christoph Sramek
(from: Freie Presse Chemnitz/Freiberg, 5.9.2005)
With a musical experiment the 12th season of the "Mittelsächsischer Kultursommer" which has united 4000 participations in 40 cultural events has come to an end on Saturday. At the conclusion concert in the Freiberger cathedral under the direction of musical director Jan Michael Horstmann, with Anton Bruckner and Alois Bröder (age-class 1961) two composers stood on the program who have in common at best their initials.
The four movements of Bruckners early work, the second symphony in d-minor later rejected by him (zeroth), were presented by the Mittelsächsische Philharmonie not as a block, but tie together with Alois Bröder's work Vingt Moments. This experienced its premiere in the presence of the composer. The musical snapshots, sketches, miniatures of the contemporary composer, often only few bars long, want to make the sound experienceable as a sensuous phenomenon beyond all classical conventions. One time the strings laid wide sound areas, then single, lost tones of the piano rose in the width of the space, or the whole instrumental spectrum of the orchestra became audible. In the change with the four movements of the Bruckner-symphony strong breaks resulted on the one hand, however, partially the works took in also the mood of the other in each case. Thus moment XVI "intimately" with which the winds developed musical ideas gently and hesitantly, led over in the secludedly starting finale of the symphony.
Claudia Hanisch
(from: Freie Presse Freiberg, 5.9.2005)
Already three years ago Alois Bröder has composed his Vingt Moments, however only now in Landau the 20 snapshots were performed for the first time on the whole. In the last year, they sounded interconnected with Bruckners "Nullter." An always legitimate and from the composer permitted procedure, because he understands his work as open in a multiple sense, as adhered to the moment and anything but firmly complying itself to a work. Differently than Anton Webern whose short orchestra pieces are the result of extreme concentration and build up in few bars a whole symphonic world, Bröders 20 moments work like fragments, like sounding asteroids which freely float in the space. The tone language is highly expressive, reminds now and then of Mahler and Alban Berg, the structure is complicated, the sound of the full orchestra is extremely colorfully and the dynamism wide stretched. A symphony in strong lights in which also a waltz occurs and that was played by the Staatsphilharmonie under its principal conductor Ari Rasilainen with absorbing intensity.
Die Rheinpfalz, 28.9.2006
A rather daring season prelude of the "Mainzer Meisterkonzerte" in the Rheingoldhalle with contemporary music: with their aphoristic brevity the Vingt Moments by the 1961 in Darmstadt born composer Alois Bröder however woke the interest of the open-minded listeners immediately. The always only second-short 20 scenes sounded namely very varied in the quasi film-musical and plastic presentation of the Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz under the direction of principal conductor Ari Rasilainen: from the extremely reductive and meager over more violent gestures in the nearly full orchestra set up to the sporadically idyllic. All that looked spliced like freely associatively and united a fullness of ideas compactly on the narrowest space. A counterdraft to some modern talkativeness.
Guido Holze
(from: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 12.10.2006)