RundfunkchorLounge "Plug it in"

Konzert

The second lounge of this season is dedicated to the interface between composition and electronics. While our selected discussion partners will shed light on the content of this broad field, the members of the Rundfunkchor Berlin will bring selected music to life that spans almost a century.

Our journey begins with Ernst Toch's vocal work Fuge aus der Geografie, which was premiered as an accelerated gramophone recording at the Berlin Festival of Contemporary Music in 1930 - a genuine piece of neo-Saxon machine music. The programme continues with Expressions of Zaar, a work by the Egyptian composer and ethnomusicologist Halim El-Dabh from 1944, for which El-Dabh used a wire tone device, one of the first magnetic sound technologies - and thus created one of the first tape compositions ever, several years before the musique concrète of Pierre Schaeffer or Pierre Henry. Finally, we move to the present with Transit for Piano and Video, a piece by the Dutch composer Michel van der Aa, which congenially combines image and sound to tell the story of an old lonely man.

Each of these pieces - and they are by no means all that will be heard this evening - interprets the encounter of different sonic and technological worlds differently and individually. What they all have in common, however, is that they reflect the state of the art creatively, surprisingly and at the height of their respective times.

Wednesday, January 26
Kuppelhalle
Start: 7.30 pm
Tickets