Staatskapelle Weimar | Heinz Holliger

Under the musical direction of the conductor, instrumentalist and composer Heinz Holliger the Staatskapelle Weimar will present works in the Philharmonie as part of MaerzMusik, the festival for contemporary music which this year has the dialectical title “Utopia (lost)”, which either directly or indirectly feature music as a site of utopian thought, a place of memory and hope – but also as a place of reflection on loss, resignation, decay and death.

Heinz Holligers Tonscherben (1985), a composition “in memoriam”, is dedicated to Holliger’s friend the Israeli poet David Rokeah (1916–1985). It consists of nine small orchestral fragments which together form something like a mobile within which the miniature elements are to a certain extent interchangeable. As the title suggests, splintered, broken and sharp-edged forms and sounds dominate the composition alongside flowing lineaments and two-dimensional movements. A secretive funeral march that reveals the possibility of music being able to give the unsayable a language.

Stille und Umkehr (1970) is the last orchestral composition written by Bernd Alois Zimmermann before his death. It is a piece about disintegration. An unbreakable tempo and strong dynamic is here set against an independent and individual blues rhythm, which leads these orchestral sketches into the unspecific, into entropy.

In the second part of the concert, with Utopia (2009) by Thomas Kessler, the Staatskapelle create an acoustic landscape whereby it is tangible that an orchestra is more than professional musicians playing together. Spread around the space, each musician is equipped with a computer and an amplifier in order to distort the instrumental sound live and electronically. Kessler regards his composition as a “utopian” proposal of an alternative to a musical world in which individual characteristics and differentiated qualities are abandoned for the sake of a homogenous and unified overall sound.

19.00 hrs | South Foyer | Introduction
Wolfgang Korb talks to Thomas Kessler