Conscious Decoupling

“Hi, my name is Flora and I am an instrument.” With these words, Flora Marlene Geißelbrecht introduced her program, titled “Viola and Voice, Sybils and Songs,” for the Berlin Prize for Young Artists. But it wasn’t just a welcome—it was also a description and a summary, in typically laconic Viennese fashion. The young Austrian was playing her body: Her voice and her hands were the tools she used to fashion the musical experience.

Soprano, violist, and composer, Geißelbrecht took inspiration from the sybil of Greek mythology for her program. Works ranged from her own engaging “Im Schatten verweilen,” with its combination of spoken word, contemporary sounds, and catchy grooves to duets for one by Arlene Sierra, Sally Beamish, Giacinto Scelsi, and Rudolf Jungwirth (the latter composed specifically for Geißelbrecht). But it was mostly her own compositions—a setting of Kurt Schwitters’s Dadaist “Ursonate” and “Scots&Ire”—that convinced the audience, showing that Geißelbrecht is more than a multifaceted instrumentalist. At her young age, she is also an outstanding composer and an impressively mature artist. 

Geißelbrecht studied composition and viola in Graz and Vienna in Austria and took part in the International Ensemble Modern Academy in Frankfurt last year. Besides her classical and contemporary music projects, she composes incidental music for theater, improvises, and performs with the duo Milleflör, alongside her sister Camilla. With “Viola and Voice, Sybils and Songs,” she was one of two winners of the second Berlin Prize for Young Artists, alongside bassoonist Joy Guidry.