Bernhard Lang - Das Hirn (2020-2021) world premiere
Sarah Maria Sun ~ soprano
Bettina Berger ~ piccolo, C, alto & bass flutes
Martin Bliggenstorfer ~ cor anglais & lupophone
Richard Haynes ~ Eb, Bb, bass and contrabass clarinets
Elise Jacoberger ~ bassoon & contraforte
Vera Schnider ~ amplified harp
Samuel Fried ~ piano & synthesiser
Maximilian Haft ~ violin
Jan-Filip Tupa ~ violoncello
Tickets via www.dampfzentrale.ch/event/duerrenmatts-hirn-dez-2021/
Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990) and his work are celebrated and honoured on the occasion of his 100th birthday, but also critically re-evaluated. A long overdue shift of emphasis within his public's perception is due: it is not the successful, albeit misunderstood author in the limelight, but as a 'locksmith of thought', an author of bold and innovative 20th century prose that reached its climax in the autobiography, Stoffe (Fabrics), written between 1981 and 1990. The renowned Austrian composer Bernhard Lang, who has already worked multiple times with literary texts, including Arthur Schnitzler, Gustav Meyrinck, Samuel Beckett and William S. Burroughs, is writing an evening-length work of both a musical and literary nature, for Ensemble Proton Bern and the incredible vocal stylings of soprano, Sarah Maria Sun, rendering Dürrenmatt's final text, Das Hirn (The Brain), audible and understandable.
"Das Hirn is the last thing I wrote. There are materials in Stoffe that are very old. The whole thing is of course a retrospective. I always ask myself: How did I become what I am, how did my thinking evolve? (...) For me, writing is a way of coming to grips with the world and mainly with myself. It is a process that never ends. Das Hirn is a collation of what I think about the world today. Today we are not sure whether we think the world into existence or whether our worldview is an expression of our thinking. Is that how it is, or is that how we interpret it? That's why I wrote a fictional text involving a brain that is all alone and invents a world, one as we see it today." (Friedrich Dürrenmatt in his last interview with Hugo Loetscher, 1990)
Text rights: Diogenes Verlag
Commissioned by Ensemble Proton Bern funded by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation.
