New music meets old music, Baroque instruments with saxophones. The Konus Quartett and the Freitagsakademie try out an anachronistic sound combination, and a new piece by the Austrian Klaus Lang is premiered.

When Adolphe Sax invented his most important instrument, the age of baroque instruments had already past. What happens when different sound instruments such as these come together from different epochs? The Konus Quartett and the Freitagsakademie, both Bernese Ensembles, present the Austrian Klaus Lang with this challenge. The composer accepted the commission with enthusiasm and composed an extensive work for the unique ensemble with old and new instruments.

He creates music that oscillates between eras and between lines. Playing techniques, sound forms and moods are detached from their inherent historical context. Lang performs a balancing act between the different habits and playing approaches of the ensembles: the piece neither belongs in the old nor in the new epoch, and so, appropriate to the theme of the Musikfestival Bern 2018, an «untimely» music arises. The evening opens with music over three centuries old by Romanus Weichlein performed by Georg Friedrich Haas’s four-year old saxophone quartet.