Werk der Woche - Bernd Alois Zimmermann: Requiem für einen jungen Dichter

Concluding Zimmermann’s highlights in the 2008/2009 season, the Berlin Philharmonic presents the monumental Requiem for a Young Poet after several other concerts of Zimmermann’s work, including Symphony in One Movement, the Brazilian dance Alagoana and his Violin Concerto.

The high point of the concert series comes on the evenings of April 23^rd, 24^th, and 25^th. The significance of these events is evident by the sheer number of participating musicians: in addition to the Berlin Philharmonic, the Rundfunkchor Berlin, the MDR Radio Choir Leipzig, Men of the WDR Radio Choir and Men of the SWR Vocal Ensemble Stuttgart all will joint together on one stage. Caroline Stein (Soprano) and Claudio Otelli (Baritone) will be the featured soloists, along with narrators Gert Voss and Thomas Wittmann. The sound engineer João Rafael will also play a special role in this performance; an expert in electronic media, he has engineered and designed every previous performance of Zimmermann’s Requiem. Topping off this amazingly talented pool of participants is Peter Eötvös, who will oversee the entire production as conductor.

The performance on Saturday, April 25^th will be broadcast live via the Berlin Philharmonic’s “Digital Concert Hall.” More information can be found in the Requiem trailer on their website.

James Joyce, Mao Tse-tung, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Adolf Hitler, John XXIII, John Lennon, Ludwig van Beethoven ... The long list from whom Zimmermann quotes extends on and on. But what do these names have in common that links them together within a musical work? All of these people changed the world in undisputedly different ways. The composer maintains an exact answer to the question of guilt. His approach is post-modern, through and through: it does not try to arrange, evaluate, or analyze. Instead it can only represent. Zimmermann paints a portrait of diverse sonic phenomena that, despite fundamental differences, sound together in one musical work. Through the simultaneity of musical quotations, spoken text and sound recordings in his work, Zimmermann creates a “music-hologram” which presents music in “spherical time.” This idea is Zimmermann’s greatest legacy, which he left behind in the 1969 composition Requiem for a Young Poet, only a year before he committed suicide.

Despite the complexity of his work, and the massive nature of the sound-worlds they create, Zimmermann was extremely popular with his contemporary audiences. The conductor Ingo Metzmacher was asked in an interview whether or not an audience member would be simply overwhelmed. His answer: “Astoundingly, it was one of the greatest successes of our season. It is a massive, striking piece, and it has much to do with Zimmermann’s concept of ‘spherical time’—of the simultaneity of what we often assume to be far apart.”