Completely detached from all pandemic inconveniences and annoyances, serenely dedicated to the Good True Beautiful–as much as one might wish for this, it is unfortunately completely unrealistic, not only because the pandemic situation has a lasting effect on the daily routine of the organizers, on artistic and organizational work processes, but also because the need to adjust to unprecedented and never feared facts, being thrown upon oneself and confronted with oneself and the needs of others, directly affects art.…
Thus, a pandemic festival program lies before us, even more dense than usual, because some things from last year still had to be said, because the artistic need for expression is great in the face of pressing world events, because substantive decisions have demanded dramaturgical additions, and last but not least, because artists are given a different kind of attention in the international festival context than in singular projects. Of course, we want to make this attention possible.
The artistic reactions to this challenging time are very different. Evening-length works allow us to comprehend the expansion of time and direct our ears, as it were, with a magnifying glass to the smallest differences and frictions, focused and concentrated on the beauty of details. Other works playfully seize the technical achievements of the »new reality« and take us on a hybrid digital adventure. And there is music that unfolds completely self-referentially, unaffected by the pandemic situation. This year’s festival thus once again represents a great diversity of what is currently relevant, pressing or questioning in the world of new music.
Those who have followed our work over the past two years have experienced two strands as particularly formative. The first is the mission that our colleague and friend Maria Kalesnikava has virtually conveyed to us, after we followed her charismatic and powerful advocacy of democracy with growing respect and sympathy in the summer of 2020 and accepted her decision, which had become a myth, to achieve more for her homeland as a dissident in prison than as a musician in Stuttgart. Once again we focus on Belarus, invite Belarusian artists to draw a differentiated picture of their situation between exile and resistance with the means of music, poetry, visual and conceptual art. The dramatic developments in Eastern Europe give rise to fears that we are once again heading towards a lasting East-West conflict. All the more important is the exchange on the level of civil society, the understanding of life in patriarchal and autocratic societies. An impressive insight is provided by Sergej Shabohin’s installation »Practises of Subordination« (concert 13), which illuminates life under dictatorship in a way that is as enigmatic as it is revealing, and whose visual language also permeates this preliminary program.
Another focus is the examination of social distancing and the digital means of communication that have grown out of it. In this way, formats have emerged that will certainly complement the traditional concert form in the long term. ECLAT ’21 has shown that online hosting can develop its own charms and produce an exciting festival. In 2022, the focus will be on how we can connect the booster- and FFP2-armed 2G+ live audience that will hopefully flock to our halls with a worldwide online audience. Together with the festival’s protagonists, we are inventing an independent stage space for the computer screen that will translate the individual aura of each work into the digital. Special film perspectives, text and video animations, collages, hybrid and interactive music theater formats will be used to create exciting concert events and an informative and communicative ECLAT portal that will provide a stimulating festival experience for audiences near and far.
This hybrid combination of the local concerts with their elaborate online presentation is made possible by the support of the Baden-Württemberg Foundation, to whom we would like to express our sincere thanks, as well as to all the sponsors mentioned inside the program.
It will be challenging to perceive the whole complex program of the six festival days. But fortunately we have not only 21, but 42 events, and the concerts streamed in real time will be available »on demand« on the Internet for several more weeks. So develop your own festival dramaturgy–and also decide for yourself what quantity discount you want to allow yourself, which we have so far always given you through festival passes, which–again due to the pandemic–is not practical this time.
We look forward to seeing you in a few days when the curtain will rise on our web portal and the doors will open in the Theaterhaus: Welcome to ECLAT 2022!
Christine Fischer Artistic Director and the entire festival team
music theater for children from 6 years ᵁᴬ
With wit, poetry and great experience in children’s musical theater, the congenial team Weiss/Kampe transforms the ascolta musicians into seven dwarfs who first must find their team spirit in order to achieve great goals.
Gordon Kampe composition, Manfred Weiss text/scenic concept, Theresa Szorek narrator, Ensemble Ascolta
Performance
Image, text and sound create a narrative about the drama in our European neighboring country that is as differentiated as it is haunting. After the performance, ECHOES will be on view as an installation until February 5.
By and with Nadya Sayapina, Lesia Pcholka, Zhanna Gladko, Viktoriia Vitrenko, Gareth Davis, Christoph Ogiermann
music theater for children from 6 years ᵁᴬ
With wit, poetry and great experience in children’s musical theater, the congenial team Weiss/Kampe transforms the ascolta musicians into seven dwarfs who first must find their team spirit in order to achieve great goals.
Gordon Kampe composition, Manfred Weiss text/scenic concept, Theresa Szorek narrator, Ensemble Ascolta
With a celebration of the »physicality of sound« and in »unique moments that express what passes and cannot be reconstructed,« Oscar Bianchi and Annesley Black open the five plentiful concert days at the Theaterhaus.
Oscar Bianchi: Plenty for two. Eine idiosynkratische Allianz ᵁᴬ
Annesley Black: Tolerance Stacks II ᵁᴬ
Ensemble Musikfabrik, Clement Power conductor
»The sensory drama of the madrigals becomes a deep underwater theater, where pure sensations and modulations between visual and felt sound create a provocation that allows listeners to become their own storytellers.«
Chaya Czernowin: IMMATERIAL ᵁᴬ
I. A book of madrigals and intermezzos II. A sound theater
Neue Vocalsolisten
To excel on the instrument, but to live precariously: This is what freelance musicians have always done. Now, however, the arts are increasingly calling the »masterful« into question. A project about the precarious as a principle of form and about giving up control over the musical situation.
Werke von Carola Bauckholt & Elizabeth Hobbs ᵁᴬ, Simon Løffler, Laurence Crane, Lisa Streich
mit Ellen Ugelvik piano/performance, Jennifer Torrence percussion/performance, Anders Førisdal performance
for the Composition Prize of the State Capital Stuttgart 2021
Three prize winners, three different aesthetic concepts. The »tonal found objects« of the first prize winner Benjamin Scheuer, who tries to recreate sounds with various toys and sound objects, are often humorous, strange and full of extra-musical associations.
Works by Mikołaj Laskowski, Benjamin Scheuer and Francesco Ciurlo with Kilian Herold clarinet, Teodoro Anzellotti accordion, Peter Veale oboe, Ensemble Musikfabrik, Clement Power conductor
At the end of the evening, the precarious leads to a post-apocalyptic situation: dream sequences between concert, audio play, music theater, text, modernism nostalgia and choreography.
Trond Reinholdtsen: NO IDEAS. NO NEW PERSPECTIVE
for Ellen, Jennifer, emergency instruments, ghosts, floating instruments, text, rain samples, modernist-nostalgic-neoclassical-revival video documentation, the Blob, varying degrees of darkness and choir ᵁᴬ
presentation, performance, conversation
Kinga Tóth and Silvia Rosani react to male-dominated social structures with a hybrid performance that makes external determination, hierarchy and feelings of powerlessness directly tangible.
Performance & talk by & with the writer / performer Kinga Toth & the composer Silvia Rosani.
In the context of the Hannsmann-Poethen Literature Scholarship
»Sounds of despair at a dull-dumb human world in failure«: Ferro Canto, composed for the Donaueschinger Musiktage 1989, sings »of the man who beat an iron drum with heavy wooden sticks … and who–ridden by the demon of knowledge–nevertheless blows for departure.«
Works by Saed Haddad ᵁᴬ, Ying Wang ᵁᴬ and Volker Heyn ᵁᴬ
Pedro Carneiro quarter-tone marimba, SWR Symphonieorchester, SWR Experimentalstudio, Gregor Mayrhofer conductor
»A little bit of utopian megalomania« is always part of Pony says, the trio that combines virtuosity and charisma with artistic care and performative ambition. Their hybrid concert will offer a completely different experience online than to the audience at the Theaterhaus.
Works by Steven Takasugi ᵁᴬ and Jessie Marino ᵁᴬ
Lucas Gérin percussion, Felix Nagl piano, Thilo Ruck guitar
»It’s probably time to take a breath, observe our inner silence, listen deeply to the ‘present’ voices,« says Liping Ting, who joins musicians live from Taipei (Taiwan) for a beautifully poetic performance in Stuttgart.
Hybrid performance for performer, oboe, violoncello, synthesizer & video with Liping Ting voice/performance (live streamed from Taiwan), Simon Strasser oboe, Mathis Mayr violoncello, Ernst Surberg synthesizer
Anonyme Bestattungen (Anonymous funerals)
»A music that leaves you alone with everything without having to feel lonely. A music that is distant from the ego, that steps back behind sensibility to leave room for sensation…« Over 4 hours of music that can be attended in full or in parts.
Isabel Mundry: Figura for two trumpets ᵁᴬ. Robin Hoffmann: Anonyme Bestattungen ᵁᴬ with Marco Blaauw, Markus Schwind, Ensemble Ascolta.
From text, images, photos and objects, artist Sergey Shabohin formulated a poignant narrative about the state structures that put citizens in Belarus under pressure. Musically commented by Christoph Ogiermann, the »Practises of Subordination« are decoded for us by Lena Prents. Valzhyna Mort talks with Georg Büchner Prize winner Jan Wagner about her poetry collection »Music for the Dead and the Risen,« from which Oxana Omelchuk musically interprets the poem »Music for Girls Voice and Bison.«
Uli Löffler and Hannah Weirich expose their impressive arsenal of analog keyboards »to the innovative spirit of the current generation of composers« and let the formerly futuristic instruments experience a not at all nostalgic renaissance.
Works by Dariya Maminova, Eivind Buene, Oxana Omelchuk ᵁᴬ, Milica Djordjević ᵁᴬ, Gordon Kampe with Hannah Weirich violine/e-Violin, Ulrich Löffler Minimoog, Behringer 2600 Synthesizer, Yamaha YC-30 Orgel, Hohner Clavinet, Philicorda, Hohner String Melody
Musiktheater hybrid ᵁᴬ
To understand our involvement in global structures, the actors start a mushroom expedition. With their hypothesis that the bizarre world of hyphae and mycelia could be the model for a better world, they also engage the digital audience in an adventurous hybrid game.
Andreas Eduardo Frank composition, Matthias Rebstock stage direction/libretto, Sabine Hilscher stage and costume design, alisch berlec hönow graphic design, Miguel Ángel García Martín percussion / objects, Neue Vocalsolisten
As if it were a figure with a thousand faces: thanks to the guitar’s innumerable possibilities (microtonal, agile, resonant, percussive, spectral, rhythmic, harmonic, melodic), Fuentes forms a gigantic instrument that »floats above a great labyrinthine sound space.«
Poème Maudit for microtonal guitar quartet & guitar ensemble ᵁᴬ
Arturo Fuentes composition/direction/light, aleph Gitarrenquartett, Jugend-Gitarrenorchester Baden-Württemberg
by James Rushford and Judith Hamann (2022) ᵁᴬ
The two guests at Solitude share an interest in late medieval music, extended pure tuning, and improvisation. The protagonist is a portable organ modeled after a 13th century instrument.
Midmeste ᵁᴬ by and with James Rushford Portativ-Orgel, Judith Hamann Violoncello
A project of the Akademie Schloss Solitude
The two soloists want to make »the largely unprocessed electroacoustic potential« of their unusual combination of instruments audible, and compose a dramaturgically continuous performance that leads into an open improvisational finale.
Works by Anna Sowa ᵁᴬ, Clara Iannotta ᵁᴬ, Georges Aperghis, Hugue Dufourt, Christopher Trapani ᵁᴬ with Uli Fussenegger double bass, Yaron Deutsch e-guitar
The five staged song cycles for a self-accompanying performer reveal various psychological states of being in-between, alluding to pandemic seclusion, but also to the isolation of a resistance fighter in her prison cell. For Maria Kalesnikava.
Song cycles by Sven Ingo Koch ᵁᴬ, Ying Wang ᵁᴬ, Agata Zubel ᵁᴬ, Alla Zagaykevich ᵁᴬ, Maxim Shalygin with Viktoriia Vitrenko voice/ piano, Titus Selge scenic concept
Unfortunately, the SWR Vokalensemble had to cancel its participation in ECLAT due to Corona. The soloists of this concert have developed an alternative program with chamber music and juxtapose the two world premieres for trombone quartet with the nucleus of the originally planned choral work by Valerio Sannicandro, »Visio« for three violas. In three solo works for voice, the overtone singer Anna-Maria Hefele gives us the opportunity to discover the phenomenon of polyphonic overtone singing.
Even the strong Belarusian jazz and improv scene has left its country for the most part. Four experimental exile bands in four European cities celebrate hybrid the power of cohesion, from which the vision of a better world and a Belarus worth living in can grow.
Simultaneous concert with Macabre (Minsk/BY), Le Cru (Kiev/UA), Fantastic Swimmers (Warsaw/PL) and B.O.D. (Stuttgart/D). Eugene Buldyk Artistic direction