Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart

The world premiere of Mauricio Kagel’s Der Turm zu Babel (The Tower of Babel) will be at the centre of the concert featuring Neue Vokalsolisten Stuttgart at Heilig-Kreuz-Kirche in Berlin. Mauricio Kagel, winner of the Ernst von Siemens Music Award 2000 has set to music the corresponding text from the Old Testament with 18 melodies for solo vocals in 18 different languages. For the first time, all 18 melodies of the cycle will be performed together in one concert, in a special arrangement adapted to the architectonic setting of the church.

Another first performance will present composer Jan Koop (Stuttgart) with a piece for six vocals that elaborates on the topic of the confusion of tongues. Vadim Karassikov’s Pleats of Noon (1998) on the other hand symbolizes the standstill, the (building) “freeze“. Like under a magnifying glass, Karassikov focuses on the mouth as our central organ of speech and with microscopic accuracy exhibits the utterance of human sounds in a most daring expansiveness. Finally, and as an absolute contrast to Karassikov’s piece, we will hear the vocalists in Georges Aperghis’ work Petrrohl (2001), celebrating Adolf Wölfli’s confused language at breakneck speed.