Review: Lost Highway Suite by Olga Neuwirth

Lost Highway Suite by Olga Neuwirth is a composition for a large ensemble of musicians, six soloists and live electronics, which is based on the psycho-noir David Lynch film.

When I Walked into the concert room, there are some instruments that are related to the live electronics already placed on the stage, and I could not recognize most of them. “That’s gonna be a strange concert”, that is my first impression for the concert. And then, musicians with guitar, saxophone, clarinet, trombone, accordion, keyboards and of course the violin family. I was surprised that there are so many speakers on the stage and around the concert room. When the concert just begins, the sound effects really impress me, which I never felt in any other concerts. As a concert with so many different musical materials, great sound effects are really important since there are so many instruments that will be played at the same time. Letting audiences hear all the sounds and enjoying them, I think one of the most important factors that this concert would be tremendous is ascribed to the speakers in the EMPAC, which really impresses me with the outstanding sound effects.

“ What is the concert talking about?”, that is my second thoughts while listening to the concert. Since the melodies and phrases are not like classical musical concert, instead, it tells a story to us. I did not see the film before, so at the beginning of the concert, I could not get the “resonance” while listening to concert. The story definitely has several parts, since the style of the music changed over and over again, which reflected the meaning and emotion had changed.

I was impressed by the skills that these musicians got. I played the violin for almost ten years, and I know how hard it is to control it to play a prolonged sound with smooth and steady sound. At the same time, one of the musician switched between cello and electric guitar. Though there are some similarities between those two musical instruments, playing both of them during one concert is really hard, since the musician needs to switch the “playing style” while changing the musical instrument. “All the concerts would have some turnovers”, that is what I think about the concerts. However, for this concert, I did not hear any discords during the whole concert, which means there is no big error (maybe a few small errors that I did not recognize, since I am not familiar with this concert). In a word, these musicians are really skilled and experienced and I think that is the most important factor for a good concert. At the end of the performance, the keyboardist yelled a few times, and it is the first time that I hear human voices in a concert and I think that is really innovative and stunning.

Finally, I think the whole performance is really impressive and outstanding, though I did not know the stories that are inside the music. The techniques of electric musical instruments are fancy and the skills of all the musicians are fascinating. I think this kind of innovative concert is really meaningful for me since I could recognize new techniques of music and new thoughts and ideas about how to make music.