Composition Commission issued to Nikolaus Brass

Münchener Biennale, Germany

Once again in 2014 the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation will be providing extensive support for the Munich Biennale, for the last time this year under the artistic direction of Peter Ruzicka. Part of the foundation’s support spanning several years is the funding of the composition commission issued to Nikolaus Brass for the music theater project “Sommertag” (Summer’s Day) realized in collaboration with director Waltraud Lehner. After featuring at the Biennale in Munich in 2015 the work will also be performed at Festival Ultraschall in Berlin and at Éclat-Festival in Stuttgart. A piece of chamber music theater “Sommertag” – after the eponymous work by Jon Fosse – is about a young woman waiting in vain for her husband who sailed out to sea alone, one day in autumn, never to return. The story is told in flashbacks: the woman, now older, recalls that day he disappeared – her memories triggered by the visit of her friend on a beautiful summer’s day. As that day suddenly floods back to her she encounters herself as a young woman. She relives the pain of speechlessness with her husband Asle, she experiences helplessness and fear and recognizes the nature of her own relationship with her friend and that friend’s husband who, at the blurred, unreal fringes of her memory, seems to be pulling strings in a dark game like a puppeteer. Finally, she resigns herself to the irreversibility of the life she has lived. Within an open setting without borders between stage, musicians and audience all those involved are sucked into the quickening flow of her memory stream. 

May 12 – 14, 2014
Schwere Reiter, Munich, Germany 

January 2015
Radialsystem, Berlin, Germany 

February 2015
Theaterhaus Stuttgart 

Further Information:
www.muenchener-biennale.de