Like the Lourdes of new music, the
Warsaw Autumn festival yielded a few miracles this past week, at least from my perspective. The most notable has to be the as yet wholly unreported return of Markus Stockhausen to performing his father's music.
MusikFabrik was set to perform
Michaels Reise from
DONNERSTAG, but the trumpet soloist Marco Blaauw injured his lip a week before the Warsaw date. He called Markus and asked him to fill in on the show, and with no arm twisting, Markus agreed! He has not performed his father's music at all since 2001, and
Michaels Reise is a hell of a way to get back in the Stockhausen saddle. It's an excruciating trumpet part, and it was an absolute joy to hear Markus playing this music again.
The 2nd miracle, to my eye, was the audience at the Torwar, which as best I can tell is usually used for rock concerts and sporting events. The 800 seats that were put on the floor were all completely filled, and with people of all ages. There were groups of teenagers giggling and having a night out. The concert was the Polish premiere of
Cosmic Pulses, and having just presented the US Premiere of the same piece only 10 days earlier, I couldn't help but be astonished all over again at the sheer appetite for music that Europeans have. To say we had 1/10th the turnout in Omaha would be putting it kindly. (NOTE: The Omaha audience did respond to the piece more enthusiastically than the Polish one, however)
Tonight, the orchestral version of
Hymnen will be performed on the festival (in an old vodka factory, of all places). With the
Berlin performance of
Gruppen kicking off the week, one can say Stockhausen is alive and well in Europe.
NOTE: Marco Blaauw and Markus Stockhausen performed in a trumpet quartet for a few years, and Stockhausen wrote
Trompetent for them.
dung will perform the piece this Saturday at
St. Mark's on the Bowery, as part of the
Festival of New Trumpet Music.
Labels: dung, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Marco Blaauw, Markus Stockhausen, Musik Fabrik
