Klangforum Wien
A collective of risk-takers, explorers, and revolutionaries.

24 musicians from ten countries constantly explore new horizons of artistic creativity together with the most important composers of our time. Imaginative, virtuosic, and perceptive – Klangforum Wien draws from an unmistakable sound and creates spaces for experiences that challenge audiences.

The ensemble initiates extraordinary dimensions: sensual experiences with an intensity that one cannot escape. Klangforum Wien’s repertoire speaks, acts, and inspires.

Founded by Beat Furrer in 1985, Klangforum Wien is a contemporary music ensemble comprised of the world’s finest soloists.

With more than 80 performances annually worldwide, the 24-member ensemble can be seen throughout Europe, North America, South America, and Asia. At the beginning of the 2018/2019 concert season, Bas Wiegers became Klangforum Wien’s Principal Guest Conductor. The position’s predecessor, Sylvain Cambreling, will remain with the ensemble as Principal Guest Conductor emeritus. Klangforum Wien has its own annual concert series at the Wiener Konzerthaus. Every year, the ensemble commissions composers and gives numerous world and territorial premieres. Honorary members of Klangforum Wien are Friedrich Cerha, Sylvain Cambreling, and Beat Furrer.

Finnegan Downie Dear
Winner of the Mahler Competition 2020, Finnegan is increasingly recognised for his extraordinary musicianship, his command of complex scores, and his intense and mature performances.

Following a week conducting the Bamberger Symphoniker in a variety of repertoire, Finnegan won the Mahler Competition 2020, leading a final concert which included the world premiere of Miroslav Srnka’s move 04 ‘Memory Full’ and Mahler Symphony No. 4, with soloist Barbara Hannigan. He recently made concert debuts conducting the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Luxembourg Philharmonic, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Resonanz, Klangforum Wien, RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, RTÉ Concert Orchestra, State Philharmonic of Kosice and the BBC Concert Orchestra. Future symphonic engagements include concerts with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Hallé, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Hamburger Symphoniker, Camerata Salzburg, Tonkünstler Orchestra, Sinfonieorchester Basel, Tampere Philharmonic, Bamberger Symphoniker, RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra and the Sydney, Melbourne, Korea and Baltimore Symphony Orchestras.

As much at home in the opera house as in the concert hall, his recent operatic engagements include his debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, conducting Alice’s Adventures Under Ground (Gerald Barry). Last summer, he conducted critically acclaimed performances of Don Giovanni at Nevill Holt Opera. This season, he conducts Le nozze di Figaro at the Royal Swedish Opera and further ahead makes debuts at the Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin, Theater an der Wien as well as returning for new productions at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and the Royal Swedish Opera.

As Music Director of the award-winning company Shadwell Opera, he collaborates with the UK’s finest young singers and instrumentalists, bringing stagings of seminal twentieth-century and contemporary works to new audiences. His performances with Shadwell Opera have received consistent acclaim in the national and international press – among them works by Benjamin, Maxwell Davies, Turnage. Schoenberg and Stravinsky. In the 19/20 season, Shadwell Opera’s most ambitious project to date saw it tour with its orchestra and ensemble to the Mariinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg, for the Russian premiere of Oliver Knussen Where the Wild Things Are.