[JEANSELLEM VIEWER] — NIELS VIGGO BENTZON KONCERT MED VERTE AF 01 -13.02. 1974 — Categories: docs, visual, press — Keywords: Galerie S:t Petri, Jean Sellem, archive — Category: docs — The Danish composer NIELS VIGGO BENTZON is exhibiting manuscripts and drawings for various hypothetical projects at Galerie S:t Petri, Lund, from 1 to 13 February 1974.Niels Viggo Bentzon began his studies in theory, piano and organ in 1938 at the Royal Danish Conservatory in Copenhagen. Today he teaches there.He made his debut as a concert pianist in the 1940s. As a pianist and composer, he has travelled extensively in Europe and America. His works are known far beyond the borders of Denmark. To date he has written around a thousand works: operas, ballets, symphonies, chamber music, music for television, film, theatre, etc.Niels Viggo Bentzon has participated in various events, happenings and Fluxus activities and has made music influenced by, among others, Wolf Vostell, Paik and Beuys.Manuscripts and projects of various kinds have been shown in several galleries in Europe. The Royal Library in Copenhagen has a large collection of his manuscripts.At Galerie S:t Petri, Niels Viggo Bentzon presents for the first time in Sweden sketches, drawings and manuscripts for hypothetical projects such as “Mahassar University”, as well as certain excerpts (drawings, etc.) from a recently begun ballet, called “Stempel-byen” in Danish.On the opening day at 6:30 p.m., the composer will also perform at the piano a number of his own musical pieces that have never previously been played. — — — Category: docs — — — Category: visual — — — Category: visual — — — Category: visual — — — Category: visual — — — Category: visual — — — Category: visual — — — Category: visual — — — Category: visual — — — Category: visual — — — Category: visual — — — Category: press — <p>Niels Viggo Bentzon is now attempting to conquer the Royal Danish Theatre with his new opera.</p><p>(Photo: Ebbe Andersen)</p><p><br></p> — New Danish opera for the Royal Danish TheatreBarely two months after Niels Viggo Bentzon’s chamber opera Automaterne, with a libretto by the German writer Michael Leinert, had its successful world premiere at the Kiel Opera, the dynamic composer is already hard at work on a new full-length opera intended for the Royal Danish Theatre.“I simply don’t have time to wait for someone to write the libretto for me, so I have started writing it myself,” says Niels Viggo Bentzon with a broad smile. “It has gradually become another aspect of my work as well.”“I don’t yet know what the opera will be called. It will be in three acts. The plot centres on a main character — a bank manager whose high intellectual and general cultural level, in certain cases which one might well call important, becomes an obstacle to rapid decisions in the more hard-nosed and forceful aspects of banking. In a way, he is simply too intelligent for his job.“In the first act, a rivalry develops between the manager and his deputy over a routine matter. It ends with the manager deciding to go on holiday with a female employee of the bank.“On Rhodes, or somewhere similar, the two enjoy their holiday. The first half of the second act is pure idyll. But then something romantic and unreal suddenly occurs, in the style of E.T.A. Hoffmann. The bank director meets a mysterious person who anticipates his fate. He hints that the bank director had better capitulate to the forces back home that want to dismiss him from his position.“The final act has something in common with Kafka’s The Trial — just as in my Faust opera — and ends in the surreal. The manager brings a lawsuit against the bank and the staff who have taken over management during his absence, including the hated deputy manager. In the end, the manager loses the case, is demoted and transferred to a provincial branch.“There will be six or seven male roles and two female roles, as well as a chorus functioning as extras on stage. Since the action of the opera unfolds on three levels — a realistic, a non-realistic and a surrealistic one — it is quite closely related to my earlier operas Faust III and Automaterne.“The libretto is completely finished, and I have composed large parts of the music, so before the end of the year the opera will be ready to be submitted to the Royal Danish Theatre at Kongens Nytorv. The score will be arranged so that the vocal parts can be performed respectively in Danish, German and English. This should make it easier to stage the opera abroad.“In a couple of months, Copenhagen audiences will also have the opportunity to see my latest work, Automaterne. The Kiel Opera will bring it to Copenhagen as a guest performance and, on 12 September, will perform Automaterne together with my young compatriot Bent Lorentzen’s short work Musikken Forekommer Mig Yderst Bekendt at the National Gallery of Denmark. The performance will take place within the framework of DUT’s forthcoming season programme.”Hr. Bert — — — Category: press — Brutal virtuosity — but one feels sorry for the piano!LUND: Galerie S:t Petri has opened an exhibition of works by Niels Viggo Bentzon, otherwise best known as a composer. Quite naturally, the opening took the form of a small concert, with Bentzon himself at the piano performing his own compositions.The pieces performed were all connected, to a greater or lesser extent, with the drawings on display or with other visual impressions. Musically, according to Bentzon’s own comments, they consisted of improvisations based on predetermined models.The concert opened with a suite from the music for the ballet “Stempel-Byen”, which is itself part of an even larger ballet project in progress: the story of the hypothetical “Mahassaruniversitetet”.It was lively and skilful improvisation. Bentzon possesses a certain brutal virtuosity in his playing that is fascinating, even if one feels sorry for the piano.In the following two pieces, Niels Viggo Bentzon transports himself and the audience into a cheerful Dada world. It was bizarre and gently parodic anti-music which, through its inventiveness and accomplished performance, became something more than mere amusement. One readily remembers the mad chatter of the POZ-sonaten, three two-part inventions in compulsively alternating registers, and the Psykobiologiska sviten, with its chamber-music finesse drawn directly from the “piano coffin”.Hondz-Hondz (an exemplification of musical idiocy) was highly effective, whereas Sortie anthropologique, depicting West African gorillas, was not — it was more reminiscent of sinking cathedrals. There was also one further piece (this time completely written out, Traesnit).Among the objects hung on the walls were, in addition to design drawings (?) for the ballet, sheets of music with peculiar instructions, several typewritten short stories, and photographs showing strange combinations of objects. For example, steak on a door handle and a sandwich nailed down with sauce on it (vanilla?).Anyone who goes to Galerie S:t Petri may perhaps not learn a door-handle’s worth about how modern composers work, but will learn all the more about how industriously Niels Viggo keeps at it.Bengt Edlund — — — Category: press — <p><em style="color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">SKD 31.1.1974</em></p> — Danish composer exhibits at Galerie S:t PetriDrawing for Mahassar UniversityThe Danish composer Niels Viggo Bentzon is exhibiting manuscripts and drawings for various hypothetical projects at Galerie S:t Petri in Lund.Bentzon’s works are well known — to date he has written thousands of works: operas, ballets, symphonies, chamber music and music for television, film and theatre. He has participated in various events, including happenings.Manuscripts and projects of various kinds have been shown in several galleries in Europe. The Royal Library in Copenhagen has a large collection of manuscripts.This is the first time that he presents sketches, drawings and manuscripts in Sweden. Among them are excerpts from a recently begun ballet.At the opening on Friday, the composer will perform musical pieces that have never previously been played. It begins at 6:30 p.m. — — — Category: press — <p>SDS 31.01.1974</p> — Sydsvenska Dagbladet Snällposten, Thursday, 31 January 1974In Niels Viggo Bentzon’s drawing, the horses in the derby race run on stilts.Well-known composer plays at his own Lund exhibitionA Danish, exuberant Renaissance man who constantly makes himself heard, the composer Niels Viggo Bentzon, will have an opening at an art gallery in Lund tomorrow. It is the small Galerie S:t Petri that has invited the well-known musician to exhibit in its two little rooms — and to give a piano concert there.The few square metres of the former milk shop are, of course, a considerably more modest space than Mr Bentzon is accustomed to. On the other hand, he has never been afraid of the unexpected or of doing surprising things.In Lund he will now exhibit manuscripts and drawings for various hypothetical projects, and at the concert he will present his own compositions that have not previously been performed. One of them may seem somewhat distracting, “Hondz-Hondz”, with an explanation in parentheses: “exemplification of musical idiocy”. The concert otherwise begins with a suite from the music for a ballet he is currently working on, “Stylt-staden”, whose theme he illustrates with sketches on the gallery walls.Niels Viggo Bentzon is now a teacher at the Royal Danish Conservatory in Copenhagen, where he himself began his studies in 1938. As a pianist and composer he has travelled extensively in Europe and America. As a composer he is enormously productive and has already completed around a thousand works: thirteen symphonies, five piano concertos, two violin concertos, as well as operas, ballets, chamber music, and music for theatre, film and television... He has the ability to compose very quickly, but he also believes that it is not his task to make the selection; contemporary listeners and posterity can do that. So he works at great speed.He has shown manuscripts and projects at several galleries in Europe, and at S:t Petri he is now presenting for the first time in Sweden drawings for projects such as Mahassar-universitet and for the ballet about the city where everything and everyone walks on stilts.