novel "mobile" sounds

Thomas Kling's monologue, expressly developed for the Scenic concept for mobile sounds, female dancers, and narrator, describes stations of the life of the poet and musician Oswald von Wolkenstein (1377-1445).

The text, of which Michael Autenrieth's recitation was unfortunately not always audible, is illustrated and its impression heightened by three kettle-drum and three brass players. The kettle-drum players trundle their instruments across the stage, whereas the players of wind-instruments, sitting in wheel-chairs, are pushed by dancers.

The choreographic task for Hagen's ballet-master Richard Wherlock was rather small - the mobile musicians domineer, producing audible impressions of war and destruction, of pain, grief, and renouncement in novel sound combinations. The few visitors who found their way to the theatre were fascinated by the extraordinary procedures on stage.

Music, lyrical texts, and movement together elucidated the structures of power and their horrible influence on a society that to this day functions as in the middle ages.

Wolkenstein. Mobilisierun'.

It was the strange title, perhaps, which one didn't know what to make of, or possibly the subtitle Scenic concept for mobile sounds, female dancers, and narrator which accounted for the empty house on the occasion of the second contribution to the festival of contemporary music.

Yet the performance, lasting 75-minutes, can by no means be considered as lost time. One has to consult an encyclopaedia for knowing who this Oswald Wolkenstein was. The poet of the late midle ages, living from 1377 to 1445, acted as counterpart to the "minnesang", the golden age of which had at that time long since vanished. This man's adventurous life, reminiscent of a travel book, Thomas Kling takes as subject for his text in form of a monologue.

Thomas Witzmann, a trained percussionist, added to this an acoustic background with parts for trumpet, two trombones, and three kettle-drums. What sounds bizarre has quite its own attractions. The variety of sounds, produced by the six musicians, is astonishing, full of interest and thoroughly gripping.

The second part of the title Mobilisierun' does not refer to the hero's many voyages alone, but to the mobile performers, too.All the time the three percussionists shove their kettle-drums around, the brass players, sitting in wheel-chairs, are pushed across the stage by three female members of the ballet.

What at first sounds absurd discloses yet, depending on the actual direction, sundry possibilities of sound. Apart from the reciter whose diction left something to be desired, the musical aspect, alternating between silence, faint noisiness, solos, trios, and two brilliant ensembles, captivated throughout.

Narrowing of the horizon

Two tombonists and a trumpet player crouching in wheel-chairs are pushed by nurses across the black stage. Whereas at first they produce only endless mournful sounds, they then more and more find a language in common that at last results in a sort of folkloristic Jam session together with the three kettle-drums, which also have been moving grumblingly through the dark for some time.

Meanwhile the actor Michael Authenrieth is sitting like Dr. Strangelove before a microphone, bragging about countries, women, wars, and head injuries, texts in which Thomas Kling echoes the Tyrolese Oswald von Wolkenstein, traveller, poet, and knight personified. The slightly enigmatic composition titled Wolkenstein. Mobilisierun' is no doubt to be understood as a criticism of that kind of tourism which mutilates the human intellect and rather narrows the human outlook than otherwise.

Its composer and producer Thomas Witzmann, holding a scholarship of the Akademie Schloß Solitude, created with the help of the extremely talented Hagen ballet-master Richard Wheelock and Antje Camila Diekow, whose management of the lights was rich in ideas, a very slow, oppressive performance, granting merely two outbursts from the lethargy, when the nurses turn out to be dancers, shaking their arms and legs.

At the end of the 60 minutes instrumental rubbish only dominated the stage of this pre-performance at the theatre. The true première will take place in Cologne on May 18th, when the broadcasting company WDR will record the performance.