Concert at Jahrhunderthalle

Messiaen’s Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum for a large orchestra of winds and percussion was explicitly composed for very large spaces. Deep unison lines stand block like against bell and tam-tam, complex orchestrated bird voices are combined with complex Indian rhythms. And even without an awareness of the religious motifs, the confident faith in this music is direct.

With Devil’s Harmony, Ferrari begins his history of pleasure and despair and thus seems to directly respond to the hymnic certainty of belief in Messiaen. The composer, sound artist, and audio playwright became famous with musique concrète and here works with musical cells and quotations that are subjected to unnoticed transformation.

In his last composition  Ich wandte mich …  Bernd Alois Zimmermann formulates the insoluble conflict between observing the world and notions of religious salvation by confronting Dostoyevsky’s Spanish Great Inquisitor with texts from Ecclesiastes .

After last year’s performances of Helmut Lachenmann’s Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern hr-Sinfonieorchester is once again a guest at Jahrhunderthalle Bochum, now under conductor Sylvain Cambreling.