Film & Live Music

“Samuel Beckett’s late prose works have had a profound influence on my work. Beckett weighs every word, his shadows, his echoes”, Rebecca Saunders professed. From the age of 60, the author turned to television, a medium that may no longer have been cutting edge at the time, but that was still unprecedented in its wide distribution. Because his cooperation with British broadcasting institutions dragged on, Beckett turned to Südfunk Stuttgart (a part of Südwestrundfunk today). With their production team, he realised and directed four projects between 1977 and 1982 (“crazy inventions for televisions”), including “Ghost Trio”, which is based on Beethoven’s eponymous Piano Trio in D major.

Rebecca Saunders shares Beckett’s affinity to moving images and his way of forming time through art and suspending its measured process. “946-3” was originally a painting by Gerhard Richter, from which he and Corinna Belz created a film of moving colours. Saunders was fascinated by “his radiance, his hypnotizing, absolute concentration and above all, his way of suspending any sense of time”. She wrote the music for this abstract film for trumpet player Marco Blaauw who will perform at the Philharmonie three days previously in the concert with Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, in Rebecca Saunders’ composition “White” for trumpet solo.