Date / Place I

31 October 2017 Bern Cathedral

Date / Place II

01 November 2017 Bern Cathedral

Date / Place III

05 November 2017 Grossmünster, Zürich

Date / Place IV

23 November 2017 Lausanne cathedral

Date / Place V

24 November 2017 Predigerkirche, Basel

Series

music theatre

Title

Stone heaven

Program

Daniel Glaus (*1957) “Steinhimmel” Space Symphony for vocal ensemble, choir with sound jackets and instrumental ensemble (2016/17, WP)

Musicians

Eva Oltiványi
soprano
Meret Roth
soprano
Sonoe Kato
mezzo soprano
Gianna Lunardi
mezzo soprano
Jean Knutti
baritone
Michael Kreis
bass
Jean-Christophe Groffe
bass
Tiago Mota
bass
Christoph Bösch
flute
Pilar Fontalba
oboe
Toshiko Sakakibara
clarinet, bass clarinet
Raphael Camenisch
alto saxophone
Michael Büttler
trombone
Daniel Stalder
percussion
Friedemann Treiber
violin
David Sontòn Caflisch
violin
Petra Ackermann
viola
Stéphanie Meyer
cello
Aleksander Gabryś
double bass
Vokalensemble Zürich
choir
Peter Siegwart
choirmaster
Cantemus Heiliggeist Bern
choir
Michael Kreis
choirmaster
Manon Criblez
sound jackets
Peter Siegwart
conductor

Program description

1517 and 2017

The Reformation thoughts, taking up the old heretical voices of the mystics and developing them further, led to a political and inner-church upheaval of unimagined dimensions and later influenced the Enlightenment and secularization.

Today, global economic interests are confronted with tendencies of national isolation and radicalizing religious fundamentalism. In between are people. They are lynched, tortured, incapacitated, expelled or, misled by false hopes for a better life, seduced and forced to flee.

Imagine: an overcrowded boat on the stormy Mediterranean Sea at night. Hundreds of people cry out desperately and perhaps silently for help.

Or listen in on the flames of the burning Grenfell Tower in London.

Woe betide if the voices were to become loud and reach our ears unhindered!

Statements of the reformers Oekolampad Basel | Zwingli Zurich | Haller Bern | Farel Lausanne and Luther | the threat of banishment from Rome | Mallarmé “Le Coup de Dès” | Freud “Why War” | victims of genocide from Myanmar, 2016 | the holy figures of the “Heavenly Court” in the choir vault of the Bern Cathedral | names of Jewish, Christian and Islamic mystics and the first names of a Swiss school were brought together in the composition process and mixed to form the libretto of the space symphony “STEINHIMMEL”.

The church space as an instrument becomes a resonating space, an echoing space, which all those listening, singing, playing make resound through their presence and their devotion and steer, as it were, like Noah’s Ark through the times of the present.

Daniel Glaus