His most important works, which have been interpreted by international ensembles, conductors and soloists, include the orchestral piece Der Wanderer (commissioned by the Neue Arbeiterzeitung in 1986 and premiered by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra in 1988), the string quartet "Elegie. An Diotima" (premiere 1987), the violin concerto premiered at the Bregenz Festival in 1993, his version of the Schubert's Der Graf von Gleichen, which was premiered at the Graz Styriarte in 1997 and was heard in a new version at the Bregenz Festival in 2003,[1] and the ensemble piece "...breeding lilacs out of the dead land...", commissioned by the Klangforum Wien and premiered at the Konzerthaus there. (1998). In recent years, his works have included "Threnody" for flute, clarinet and guitar (1999), The Waste Land for orchestra (2003, Bregenz Festival)[1] and the "Ophelia music for guitar", "Shell Hat and Sandal Slipper", which received its world premiere in London in October 2003 by Alexander Swete and was also performed at the Vienna Konzerthaus a year later. His opera Radek was premiered at the 2006 Bregenz Festival, a commission in co-production with the Neue Oper Wien. He also composed works for chamber orchestra and chamber ensemble, song cycles and chamber music for various instruments.
Richard Dünser about his work
In my work, external musical elements always play an important role: autobiographical sketches, literary references, images, moods.... They penetrate the work and, together with the structures inherent in it, create a fabric, a network of relationships and mutual influences. Everything grows into one another and forms a larger, superordinate whole that can also dialectically include its opposite, ruptures, unrelatedness, fragmentation. At first hearing, the various figures seem quite free, but they are very often subject to a precise formal plan: Developments, processes, atmospheric sound islands, outbreaks, silences are built into a multi-layered architecture of the composition. Distant mirror images, mirages, mirages, the remembered, the disappeared, the reappeared appear as if from dark dreams and form the mental landmarks and sounds from the innermost. My music wants to reach out to listeners and viewers, achieve resonance and social relevance, win the audience as a partner without pandering to them; evoke reflection, sadness, but also enthusiasm and understanding. My ideal is that of a work of art that focuses and bundles all the parameters of music (and sometimes of theatre, literature, the visual arts) in an overall dramaturgy, summing them up on a higher level and allowing them to interact. To this end, the compositional technique must be a complex one, exploring the totality of means, but tamed by a will to unity in diversity, with the aim of subordinating all means to a dramaturgical whole.
