“Different” is an attempt to find other aesthetic directions, away from the aesthetics established in the 20th century. Although “Different” was written in 2019-2020, it belongs to the period between 2004-2006, when I tried to synthesize Arabic music with contemporary Western music.

„Different“ is a modest attribute for any creative spirit that strives for independence and individuality and wants to stand out from the collective mind, from the style or way of thinking that prevails in a certain field, art or era. I can find no better words than the following quotes to express this:

„It is not always good to howl with the wolves.“ (Debussy)

„Otherness is that which eludes definition when definition is established.“ (Derrida)

„Style is man himself.“ (Buffon)
Saed Haddad

A fast but pleasantly active heartbeat, an unconscious smile that does not fade away, a constantly changing sound that nevertheless always leads exactly to where even more energy is released – as if one had directed it oneself; the tempo always brisk, but enough pauses to take a breath, never a screaming contrast that abruptly interrupts the pulse.

528 HZ 8va places itself deliberately and energetically in the service of an optimistic view of facts and the world. The piece does not aim at a drama of high flights and low falls, and it avoids abrupt contrasts. Instead, it is a music of joy in several stations that slide into one another. That a music that draws from the abundant fund of positive sound connotations and emotions need not drift into New Age major chords or empty brass jubilation becomes clear after only a few bars of the piece. Euphoric, chaotic moments can be found in the piece as well as warmly embracing lullaby melodies. Again and again, soloistic moments emerge from the orchestra, forming small moving groups within the flow of sound and, taking us by the hand, leading us through the piece. The piece then moves into an upward spiraling virtuosic cadenza in which material from all the preceding orchestral moments of bliss, polyphonically linked, culminates in an orgasmic climax. Music is a fountain of youth and is to be explicitly dug anew as such here. A bit like Mdma without side effects.

Now this piece is also rejuvenated – in a new version with electronics from the SWR Experimental Studio. Ying Wang sets out in search of other, digital moments of happiness that lie behind those analog ones that have already sounded. There is nothing merely zeitgeisty in this, but the digital everyday life, not only that in Zoomlandia. Individual moments of happiness in the piece are electronically paused so that they can be enjoyed longer, like a digital freezeglitch at the favorite spot – coitus extensus. Some moments are now also inverted to see if the joy inscribed in them can’t sound different. The dynamics are also expanded, everything becomes more extreme and more, that also needs a new acoustic space, 8 channels so – the electronics can do that.
Ying Wang

Instead of a comment
(to Josef Häusler, the then editor for new music at SWF Baden-Baden)

Hey Joe, what should someone say about his music?…
Maybe first play and listen,
play and listen to 247 bars of music and then say something?…
Reports about calculated construct-destruct
and sound and time things, about doubt-delay?…
Saying what after the scaffolding has come down?
Hey Joe, what I can do at best is explain the title:
Ferro Canto sings of the man who sat on the corner of George Street and
and Town Hall, Sydney, beating an iron drum with heavy wooden sticks…
on an iron drum.
So vehemently he did it, as if the drum were the embodiment
embodiment of what was tormenting him….
but also his last iron armor.
At the same time he stomped and shouted at passing gaff people
and spoke of the
„biting late autumn of the white-hot pigs“
and announced that he, who was actually a happy man,
would have liked to become a happy man, too; but
that it had become too late for that here and now.
Oh no, not a street musician with a fancy protest song or complacent denial.
No, his tones were final signs (signals) of despondency
of despair, tones of despair at a dull-dumb human world in failure.
And of his inability he sang,
to sing along to this world’s squeaky-clean song.
No madman, as we would like to have it;
rather one in the process of recognition.
Rather one, who – ridden by the demon of knowledge – nevertheless
nevertheless blows for departure.

Freely after J.H. (Jimi Hendrix) to J.H. (Josef Häusler)
Volker Heyn 1989

Volker Heyn (*1938 in Karlsruhe) emigrated to Australia in 1959. There he acquired a tape machine and experimented with the so-called “hard and soft edges of reverberating metal” as an observation of unpredictable both non-lyrical and poetic aspects of random sound events. In 1960-63 he studied at Sawitzkys Actors School in Melbourne and was a member of a touring theater company. 1966-71 followed guitar studies with Antonio Losada in Sydney, and he studied music theory with Don Andrews at the Sydney Conservatory. In 1972 Volker Heyn returned to Europe and studied guitar in Karlsruhe with Mario Sicca and composition with Werner Eugen Velte, in whose group for creative music he became a member. Since 1979 he has been a freelance composer. He has received grants from the Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg, the Heinrich Strobel Stiftung des SWF, the Rolf Liebermann and the Körber Stiftung, and the Musikfonds Neustart Kultur, among others. His works have been premiered at numerous festivals for new music.

The SWR Symphony Orchestra has its artistic home in the Liederhalle Stuttgart and the Konzerthaus Freiburg. Formed in September 2016 from the merger of the SWR Radio Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart and the SWR Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden and Freiburg, its artistic profile includes interpretative approaches from historically informed performance practice, the classical-romantic core repertoire and contemporary music in equal measure. Since the 2018/2019 season, Teodor Currentzis, one of the most internationally sought-after conductors, has been at the helm of the symphony orchestra as chief conductor. François-Xavier Roth will take over this position in the 2025/2026 season.

Annual fixtures in the SWR Symphony Orchestra’s concert calendar include SWR’s own concert series in Stuttgart, Freiburg and Mannheim as well as performances at the Donaueschingen Music Festival and the Schwetzingen SWR Festival. Since 2020, the SWR Symphony Orchestra has been the resident orchestra of the Whitsun Festival at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden. Invitations regularly take the orchestra to the Salzburg Festival, the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Berlin, Cologne, Frankfurt, Dortmund, Essen, Vienna, Edinburgh, London, Barcelona, Madrid and Warsaw.

Internationally sought-after conductors such as Herbert Blomstedt, Peter Eötvös, Christoph Eschenbach, Sir Roger Norrington, Jakub Hrůša, Eliahu Inbal, Ingo Metzmacher, Kent Nagano, Michael Sanderling, Pablo Heras-Casado, Jonathan Nott, François-Xavier Roth, Dima Slobodeniouk and David Zinman have all worked with the SWR Symphony Orchestra. Among the top-class soloists are Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Antoine Tamestit, Gil Shaham, Nicolas Altstaedt, Vadym Kholodenko, Martin Grubinger and Isabelle Faust as Artists in Residence, as well as many other renowned guests, including Hilary Hahn, Sabine Meyer, Julia Fischer, Yulianna Avdeeva, Renaud Capuçon, Anna Vinnitskaya, Janine Jansen, Mischa Maisky, Vilde Frang and Fazil Say.

With its extensive music education program, the SWR Symphonieorchester reaches around 15,000 children, young people and adults in the SWR broadcasting area every year. Numerous live broadcasts on SWR2 and concert streams on SWR.de/so enable many music lovers all over the world to take part in the symphony orchestra’s concerts.