Oscar Bianchi
Composer
Docile Ascesa — Cyprus premiere
The Shoe Factory, Nicosia - (CY)
mdw × CCOM Composition Project — Beijing
Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing - (CN)
Gr… — Wandering Sounds — Zürich
Kunstraum Walcheturm, Zürich - (CH)
6 db
concerto for six contrabasses and orchestra
Zamān
for contralto and orchestra
Matra
cantata for vocal ensemble, instrumental ensemble, trio concertante and electronics
Thanks To My Eyes
opera in one act on a libretto by Joël Pommerat
Pathos of Distance
string quartet no. 2
Pozzanghere | mezzo seccate
for soprano, eight instruments, and electronics
...Meshing Talents for a Dense and Strenuous Sound......Mr. Bianchi is fond of extremes. Some of them — the quarter tones produced by the singers, the bottom notes played on the Paetzold recorder — melt into the gray zone where human hearing gives way to a more visceral perception of air in motion. The division between rhythm and harmony also begins to blur as the sound waves of sustained close harmonies combine into an audible pulse. In “Matra” sound is above all matter, the bubbling, sputtering, trembling coming-into-being of sound as viscous and dense. (21 April 2014)
“One of the strongest was Oscar Bianchi’s Zamān”
“the molten quality of Bianchi’s musical language”
Selected excerpts — Alex Ross, And the world was calm — Substack, 27 May 2026
Editorial summary
In his account of the Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik, Alex Ross places Zamān among the festival’s standout works. He identifies Noa Frenkel, Basel Sinfonietta and conductor Titus Engel as the performers, and explains how the score draws on Dora Polacco’s diaries of exile in Switzerland and reflections from Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain.
His discussion follows the voice between broad, incantatory writing and rapid fragments interwoven with the orchestra. He praises Frenkel’s commanding performance and the music’s transformation from fluid, agitated sound into dense harmonic formations.