Ensemble Resonanz / »Sternfolgen«
Hamburg International Music Festival
One of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s best-known works is the »Tierkreis« (Zodiac), in which each of the twelve star signs is represented by a melody. Originally composed for music boxes, the melodies can also be played by a string orchestra such as Ensemble Resonanz, which puts the piece at the centre of a concert about cosmic musical relationships. The composer and conductor Rupert Huber, an expert on tracing the vibrations between worlds, has put together this evening’s programme, which includes one of his own pieces.
Karlheinz Stockhausen was a great utopian, hence the decision to devote an extensive retrospective to him at the Hamburg International Music Festival. As head of the studio for electronic music at West German Radio (WDR), he used early forms of the synthesizer to create an entire cosmos of thitherto-unprecedented sounds, advancing into new musical dimensions in the process. His works breathe the rhythm of the stars, and get lost in the spiral nebulas of infinity.
»If we tax our mind to the utmost and arrive at the limits of what can be analysed and described, that’s where mysticism begins. That’s my home as a musician, that’s where I want to go.«
Towards the end, the eccentric esoteric even claimed that he was from the planet Sirius. Notwithstanding, Stockhausen was the best-known and most important post-war German composer, influencing artists as diverse as the Beatles, Björk, Brian Eno, Pink Floyd, Amon Düül, Aphex Twin, Kraftwerk and Frank Zappa. Stockhausen believed firmly in a higher plane of human existence, and he believed that music was the key to it. It’s worth following him on this path: the utopia of music lives on.
Performers
Ensemble Resonanz
Ensemble Spinario
Hassan Sadeghi quran reciter
conductor Rupert Huber
Programme
»Sternfolgen
John Cage
Atlas Eclipticalis
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Tierkreis (Fassung für Kammerorchester)
– Interval –
Sure 53
Rupert Huber
Neues Werk