“White, rectangular shapes replace the lines. First tiny, then suddenly as high as a man, they flash stroboscopically in unforeseen places – deforming, inverting, ‘dancing.’ Finally, lines and planes merge into pulsating patterns of psychedelic colors and crystalline shapes – leaving the viewer in a veritable frenzy of color after they disappear.”
Winfried Stürzl
Ensemble S
Gérard Grisey: Le noir de l’Étoile (for six percussionists and sounds of a pulsar)
With live visuals by Laurenz Theinert
Artistic director of the festival: Jürgen Grözinger
Adam Weisman
Norbert Krämer
Minhye Ko
Simone Beneventi
Michael Pattmann
Laurent Warnier
Visionary power and timelessness can also be found in Gérard Grisey’s spectacular piece for six percussion instruments and, in the original recording from the tape, the pulsar Vela – the rotating neutron star of the supernova that exploded several thousand years ago in the Vela constellation.
Gérard Grisey (1946-1998) described his artistic approach as ‘understanding sound as a being, imbued with organic life, animated by an inner breath’. However, this piece is not dedicated to the romantic vastness of the universe, but rather to its enormous vitality resulting from the infinite movement of particles. The composer Alexander Keuk once described a performance of ‘Le Noir de l’Étoile’ as ‘a visit to a kind of acoustic planetarium is an inadequate description’.
The breathtaking work for six virtuosos is close to the edge of unplayability.
„SWR Young Classix – Die Planeten“
Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, 2014
Conductor: Matthew Coorey
Music by Holst, Adams, Ligeti and Williams
Laurenz Theinert: visual piano
With this event, a personal dream came true. Not only the collaboration with the entire orchestra of the Radio Symphony Orchestra, but also in my favorite concert hall – the Beethoven Hall in the Liederhalle Stuttgart by architect Rolf Gutbrod.
“Feature Ring”
Festspielhaus Hellerau, 2018
Eren Solak: piano, synthesizer, electronics
Felix-Otto Jacobi: double bass, electronics
Demian Kappenstein: drums, electronics
Laurenz Theinert: visual piano
With the help of a light keyboard Laurenz Theinert paints structures, lines and movements into space. He can react to the fellow musicians in the blink of an eye. The audience thus rediscovers the initially dark hall of the Festspielhaus and the reconstructed Appia stage in a unique way. Equipment, stages, props: Today, the technical infrastructure of the building itself becomes an actor. Theinert and the Ring Trio explore the anatomy of the theater and take a mysterious look behind the scenes.
“Beauty Broken”
Stadthaus Ulm, 2016
Shasta Ellenbogen: Viola
Laurenz Theinert: visual piano
Festival conception: Jürgen Grözinger
To look for beauty in new music seems perhaps inappropriate. That is precisely why we are looking at it in the 20th year of the festival. We are not looking for it on the polished surfaces of the mainstream, but in selected works in which the idea of beauty is mixed with the ancient idea of the “sublime”, which at the same time implies the unknown and the foreign.