Franui
Ennui

This is an album about boredom. It takes the award-winning Musicbanda Franui, accompanied by actor Peter Simonischek, away from their daily routine, back to the days of their childhood, and straight on to the graveyard. By ennui they don’t mean dull, though. Rather, it refers to a state of existential boredom, the moment when you are seized by black emptiness, when you realize the absurdity of life – or in whichever other ways this state has been described by philosophers. One of them, Kierkegaard, claimed that boredom could never be suspended by work but only by amusement.

Amusement, distraction, diversion, entertainment – or, in musical terms: divertimento. Franui have woven a memorable musical tale from brilliant examples of this genre, by Mozart, Satie, Schumann, and others. All there is left to say is: amuse yourselves!

Johannes Eder, clarinet, bass clarinet
Andreas Fuetsch, tuba
Romed Hopfgartner, soprano & alto saxophone, clarinet
Markus Kraler, double bass, accordion
Angelika Rainer, harp, zither, vocals
Bettina Rainer, dulcimer, vocals
Markus Rainer, trumpet, vocals
Andreas Schett, trumpet, vocals
Martin Senfter, valve trombone, vocals
Nikolai Tunkowitsch, violin

Peter Simonischek, voice (tracks 01, 04, 07, 11, 12, 14)

By Christian Seiler

Franui aren’t really on board with Mozart. Discussions on melody and genius routinely end with Schubert, no matter where they begin, and don’t even try coming to the East Tyrolean music band with magnificent Mozart coloratura or mysterious curtains of sound in the Da Ponte operas. Utterly unimpressed, they compare apples and oranges and offset the whole of Don Giovanni against Schubert’s Das Wirtshaus (“The inn”) or the Litanei auf das Fest Allerseelen (“Litany for the Feast of All Souls”) – but more of that later.

So if this Franui album – their eleventh – is now draped in a mysterious curtain of sound, generally rather un-Franui-like in its calmness and delicacy (a car mechanic would say that the band isn’t running on all cylinders), then it’s not so much a reverence to Mozart, whose divertimenti Franui make use of to spin this subtle, sparkling pattern of sound. Moreover, it is a reference to Mozart’s Gebrauchsmusik, which he composed so that his patrons wouldn’t have to fall back on their own conversation. Franui’s Ouverture ennuyeuse is a kind of Gebrauchsmusik, too, because it leads us into the panopticon of enchanting, paradoxical boredom, as the great Peter Simonischek, acting as their doorman, cheerfully exclaims: “Come on in, ladies and gentlemen, come on in to be royally bored.” [...]

The making of a recording: a popular dance and funeral band from East Tyrol embarks on a journey with Mozart and associates and discovers boredom, without ever getting bored.

Matthias Schulz, then the artistic director of Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum in Salzburg (now the artistic director of Staatsoper Unter den Linden Berlin), asked us for a contribution to the Mozartwoche 2017. Now, our sound battery made up of bowed and string instruments plus woodwind and brass is sacred to us, of course, and in our humble opinion is capable of producing a virtually inexhaustible range of musical colors. But even so – good grief, Mozart? Some years earlier we had bravely tackled the problem by superimposing the minuet from Don Giovanni with alpine folk songs; after all, in Mozart’s original the banda also performs a dance in the background, while on stage completely different things are happening. (For the result of our efforts, listen to our album “Tanz! (Franz)”.) So, what were we supposed to do this time: disassemble a piano concerto on the hammered dulcimer, or adapt an aria from Figaro or Così for the tuba? [...]

Franui is the name of a mountain pasture close to the small village of Inner- villgraten, located at 1,402 metres above sea level in East Tyrol in Austria, where most of the Franui musicians grew up. The word is of Rhaeto-Romanic origin and refers to the proximity of Innervillgraten to the Ladin-speaking region in the Dolomite Alps.

The Musicbanda of the same name have been playing together in nearly the same lineup since 1993 and are frequently invited to perform at major festivals and venues (e. g. Wiener Konzerthaus, Vienna Burgtheater, Salzburg Festival, Bregenzer Festspiele, Ruhrtriennale, Staatsoper Unter den Linden Berlin, Münchner Opernfestspiele, Philharmonie Köln, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Schauspielhaus Zurich, Holland Festival, Philharmonie de Paris).

Their adaptations of lieder by Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and Mahler have earned Franui renown beyond the borders of Austria. The ensemble regard themselves as a “transformer station between classical music, folk music, jazz and contemporary chamber music;” sometimes the original is lovingly celebrated in all its beauty, at others it is turned rightside up (or upside down), stripped down to its bare bones, enhanced, painted over, elaborated, in a process that blurs the boundaries between interpretation and improvisation, between arrangement and (re)composition.