Festival O/Modernt

Staged in June at Queen Silvia Concert Hall in Stockholm, Festival O/Modernt is the highlight of our season. We gathered a wonderful array of artists from around the world to share the stage with emerging talents for a week of concerts and arts events. The weeklong journey took its inspiration from a noted composer of the past, who is celebrated through imaginative programming and unexpected artistic juxtapositions.

Music, the unrivalled art of time, thrives on its transient mode of being. Like a ticking clock, music draws us irresistibly towards the future, but it does so by harnessing the power of memory. Structurally, musical forms depend on the ability of listeners to recall key motifs in order to experience the emotional nuances of variations and returns. More generally, music develops from generation to generation by looking backwards, building on – and sometimes dismantling – the achievements of earlier composers. While marching ever onwards into the future, therefore, music simultaneously summons us back to the past, exploiting memory and inspiring a sense of history in an endless quest for newness. The dual impetus is summed up in O/Modernt’s motto: Invent the Past; Revise the Future. These twin pillars of musical creativity are celebrated in the 2024 edition of Festival O/Modernt, which is dedicated to FRANZ SCHUBERT, a composer whose profoundly avant-garde spirit is charged with the remembrance of things past.