Kremerata Baltica and Gidon Kremer in Schleswig-Holstein Musik festival 2018

This year’s Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival takes place June 30-August 26. Gidon Kremer and Kremerata Baltica will join the festival’s line-up during August 14-15.

SCHUMAN AND “IMAGES D’ORIENT”

During the 2 concerts on August 14 in Norderstedt and on August 15 inHusum, Kremerata Baltica and Gidon Kremer will present a program with a large focus on  Robert Schumann.

The first half of the concert is dedicated to the early days of the composer’s work with Schumann’s “Fugues on B.A.C.H.” No.4,5,6 op.60, arranged by P. Angerer for string orchestra and Schumann’s “Violin Concert in a minor after the Cello Concert op.129” (arr. Rene Koering).

After the intermission the musicians will present a unique program developed by Gidon Kremer – “Images d’Orient” ( Schumann, Stockhausen).

In translation from French the program’s title means  “Different Pictures From The East”. Focused on and around “Pictures from the East” by Robert Schumann, this new program offers an unusual encounter with the works of Nizar Ali Badr, a Syrian sculptor who has been enthusiastically discussed across the social platforms. Short audio-visual inserts placed between the movements of Schumann’s composition serve as contrasting pictures from the east. According to the Syrian sculptor his unique language of pebble sculptures should “spread happiness and love amid war, destruction, death, migration, exodus, chaos, poverty and injustice.” Mr. Badr hopes that “this war will end soon, and that the killing will stop.”

In the meantime, freed Spanish journalist Ángel Sastre compares the war in Syria with a dead-end tunnel: “I identify very much with the Syrian people and am ashamed of the position taken by western countries who only talk about Syria when they see their own welfare threatened by the mass arrival of refugees. Being realistic, there seems to be no happy ending in sight for Syria. It’s a dead-end.”

Every time a stone sculpture is finished, it has to be destroyed, because fixing stones with special glue on special supports has become unaffordable in present Syria. While creating a stone sculpture, the artist knows with certainty that there is nothing there to hold it together and that all of his works will undoubtedly be destroyed in time, just like the sand mandalas. Through this inherent ephemerality Mr.Badr’s work implies the capacity to confront the temporal nature of life.

The animation is synchronized with the music from “Music Boxes” by Karlheinz Stockhausen. Selected parts of this cycle are performed by Gidon Kremer and the members of Kremerata Baltica.