LPO programme freesheet: 25 Mar 2023 - A House of Call

Heiner Goebbels

A House of Call

My Imaginary Notebook

UK premiere

Saturday 25 March 2023 7.30pm

Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall

Vimbayi Kaziboni conductor

London Philharmonic Orchestra

Part of

A place to call home

Heiner Goebbels

A House of Call: My Imaginary Notebook (2020) UK premiere

A cycle of invocations, prayers, poems and songs for large orchestra, A House of Call incorporates recordings of sounds and voices from all over the world collected by Heiner Goebbels during his travels, research and chance encounters. The cycle is a response to the history of these recordings and to their complexity, rawness and radiance. In this secular ‘responsorium’, the orchestra accompanies and supports the voices, answers and challenges them. The voices call, Goebbels says, ‘either from the past or from my personal environment; idiosyncratic voices, traditional folk material. Rituals. Literature ...’

Please note there is no interval in this performance. The concert will end at approximately 9.15pm.

Vimbayi Kaziboni Conductor

Norbert Ommer Sound Director John Brown/Heiner Goebbels Lighting Design

Pre- and post-concert events

The Clore Ballroom, Level 2, Royal Festival Hall | Free and unticketed – all welcome

Pre-concert event

6.00pm

Heiner Goebbels introduces A House of Call with LPO Artistic Director Elena Dubinets.

Post-concert event

Approx 9.30pm

Heiner Goebbels, Vimbayi Kaziboni and LPO musicians in conversation.

Performed with kind permission of Ensemble Modern. A House of Call was commissioned by Ensemble Modern, Berliner Festspiele/Musikfest Berlin, Kölner Philharmonie, beuys2021, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, musica viva/ Bayerischer Rundfunk, Wien Modern and Casa da Música Porto. World premiere: 30 August 2021, Berlin. Principal Conductor Edward Gardner supported by Aud Jebsen Principal Guest Conductor Karina Canellakis Conductor Emeritus Vladimir Jurowski Patron HRH The Duke of Kent KG Artistic Director Elena Dubinets Chief Executive David Burke Leader Pieter Schoeman supported by Neil Westreich © Ricordi/Harald Hoffmann

1 Stein Schere Papier (Rock Paper Scissors)

a) Introitus (A Response to Répons) Pierre Boulez 1981 | Cassiber 1982

b) Immer der gleichen Stein Heiner Müller

c) Under Construction (2019) Berlin 2017

The first of the four parts begins - in addition to an organ loop that always remains the same – with a bow to Pierre Boulez’s groundbreaking orchestral work Répons. The call and response principle adopted there is maintained in Heiner Müller’s Sisyphus text: ‘Always the same stone’ – and also in a Berlin construction site.

2 Grain de la Voix

a) Nu Stiri Giorgi Nareklishvili, Platon Machaidze, Lager Mannheim 1916

b) Agash Ayak Amre Kashaubayev, probably Moscow 1925

c) 1346 Hamidreza Nourbaksh 2010, Rumi

d) Krunk Komitas I Armenak Shahmuradian, Paris 1914 I Zabel le Panosian, New York 1917

The title of the second part alludes to the unique roughness, the grain of the human voice. Voices from regions around the Caucasus emerge, carrying with them not only the traces of early recording systems, but also the traces of tragic biographies.

3 Wax and Violence

a) Toccata (Vowels/Woven) Carl Stumpf, Berlin 1916 I Judith Barseleysen, Aasiaat 1906 I Erich von Hornbostel, Berlin 1907 I Abigail Bolars, Uummannaq 1906

b) Achtung Aufnahme (Attention Recording) Hans Lichtenecker, Berseba 1931

c) Nun danket alle Gott Schoolchildren, Berseba 1931

d) Ti gu go I NÎga mÎ (Some of Them Say) Haneb, Farm Lichtenstein at Windhoek 1931

The title of the third part refers to the recording technique with wax cylinders developed at the beginning of the 20th century, which made it possible for the first time to document speech and sounds, and triggered an enthusiastic collecting frenzy. The playful-seeming rehearsal recordings in the first movement are contrasted in the second with the announcements of Hans Lichtenecker, who in 1931 made recordings with children, women and men –descendants of the Nama and Herera of south-west Africa, who were almost wiped out by German soldiers a generation earlier in one of the first genocides of the 20th century. Nama schoolchildren sing an old German chant for him.

4 When Words Gone

a) Bakaki (Diálogo) Luciano und Victor Martinez, Ouebrada lsue 1980

b) Schläft ein Lied in allen Dingen Joseph von Eichendorff, Margret Goebbels, Berlin 2017

c) Kalimérisma Ekaterini Mangouli, Kalymnos 1930

d) What When Words Gone Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho 1983

In the fourth and final part, the focus shifts to other aspects of language: as a speech act, as rhyme, as lament, as incantation. We hear an excerpt of a ritual from the Amazon, the recitation of a poem by a woman whose language seems to have slowly disappeared, a morning greeting to those missing at sea sung as a lament, and finally lines from one of Samuel Beckett’s last texts, in which the narration is transported into rhythm and sound. Who speaks when words are missing?

Heiner Goebbels

German composer and director Heiner Goebbels (born 1952) is one of the most important figures of the contemporary music and theatre scene. He was a member of the art rock group Cassiber from 1982–92, and at the same time was writing music for theatre, film and ballet. In the mid-1980s he began creating audio plays for radio, often based on texts by the 20th-century German dramatist Heiner Müller, a long-term influence. Since 1988 Goebbels has composed regularly for Ensemble Modern. In 1994 came Surrogate Cities, a response to the complexity of the modern city, and in 2002 Goebbels’s first opera, Landschaft mit entfernten Verwandten, which the BBC’s Andrew McGregor called ‘a stunning achievement, and a haunting experience’.

Vimbayi Kaziboni conductor

‘A conductor who clearly knows his way around an avant-garde score’ (The Times), critics have hailed Zimbabwean-born Kaziboni among the foremost interpreters of modern classical music of his generation, having led premieres of hundreds of new works across the globe and worked directly with many of today’s leading composers. He is currently professor of music at Boston Conservatory at Berklee; artist-in-residence with the International Contemporary Ensemble; music director of the Composers Conference; and artistic advisor to the Boston Lyric Opera. A prolific conductor, this season he conducts the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, BBC Philharmonic, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Ensemble Modern and London Sinfonietta, among others. He makes his debut with the London Philharmonic Orchestra on this programme.