SPOR Festival had its premiere last year and a great deal was written about it. The general impression was very positive and that it was a worthy successor to the Numus Festival. Naturally SPOR Festival will try to live up to that again in 2006. Here is a selection of what was written.

Surrogate Cities
Århus Symphony Orchestra

What an experience! I cannot think of a festival here in Århus with such an opening as that on Wednesday when SPOR Festival started with ”Surrogate Cities”, a powerful, spell-binding and thought provoking piece.

Ole Straarup, Århus Stiftstidende 6/5 2005

Surrogate Cities af Heiner Goebbels
Århus Symphony Orchestra, Jean Thorel. Voices: Jocelyn B. Smith and David Moss

.... the vocal soloists with their dizzying technique and vocal range was unforgettable. Jocelyn B. Smith was a delightful jazz singer and David Moss is a phenomenon: When not reciting with his deep, defeatist American diction he delivered an engaging, rich, rhythmic, resonant, vocal fireworks I have quite simply never heard the equal of.

Jan Jacoby, Politiken 7/5 2005

Voz Nueva
Up to now SPOR Festival has been thought provoking and of impressively high quality.

Ole Straarup, Århus Stiftstidende 8/5 2005

”Lohengrin”
Sciarrino’s music cut deeply and unpleasantly into everything and everybody. Into the story, into the soloist, into the audience. All the instruments in Århus Sinfonietta were set up with microphones and the sound of the swirling tremolo, the beating wooodwind keys, thudding percussion, shrill tutti-beats and flicks were insistent and aggressive, although for short periods with long pauses between. Was it the sound of the forgotten corridors of the mind?
Salvatore Sciarrino calls his piece ”azione invisible” (invisible performance) but this year’s SPOR Festival deserves thanks and praise for giving Århus the chance to see this important composer’s work. It is not something one is quickly finished with.

Ole Straarup, Århus Stiftstidende 6/5 2005

SPOR Festival is over and leaves one with an impression of a high overall level of production and a somewhat less consistent quality in the works. The last is to be expected and can be seen as almost necessary for an arrangement that tries to break down barriers and take risks; that aim has been palpably present throughout.

That the festival managed to rise above a mere fumbling is primarily the result of two major pieces: the opening with Heiner Goebbels ”Surrogate Cities” and the closing with Salvatore Sciarrino’s ”Lohengrin”. The last of the two, with its paraphrasing of the classic legend from Richard Wagner’s opera, was the festival’s most raw and sensitive work, the quintessence of its efforts. (...) In a strong and brave performance, further developed in powerfully present video projections, Rikke Simonsen was able to gestalt a schizophrenic, hallucinating Elsa in and around a hospital bed.

Jan Jacoby, Politiken 10/5 2005