goldberg variationen
The Vienna State Ballet is part of the Vienna State Opera and Vienna Volksoper
goldberg variationen
Tabula Rasa Ohad Naharin Goldberg-Variationen Heinz Spoerli Premiere 27 April 2023 Vienna State Opera
about today’s performance
Johann Sebastian Bach gave his Goldberg Variations the simple title Piano exercise, “consisting of an aria with various variations [...]. For connoisseurs for the refreshment of their spirits”– and composed a marvel of 30 variations, canons, an overture, a quodlibet as well as an aria framing the whole and more: a kind of instrumental “Welttheater”, cheerful and profound, dance-like and cantabile, pensive and playful. In 1993, Swiss choreographer Heinz Spoerli took up the challenge of meeting this Opus summum for the piano with dance and creating one of his major works. Bach’s composition offers Spoerli the ideal scope to develop his “extended neoclassicism”: a virtuosic language of dance characterised by subtlety and clarity which did not feel the need to pursue abstraction but was also capable of telling things without an explicit narrative. Goldberg-Variationen is a dance drama built out of music-making with the body about human beings, their joys and fears, loneliness and desires, allegiances and quarrels, youth and age – an 80-minute panorama of life. In the Vienna State Ballet’s production, Heinz Spoerli’s Goldberg-Variationen stand alongside another first performance at the Vienna State Opera: Tabula Rasa by Ohad Naharin to the eponymous piece by the composer Arvo Pärt. Naharin’s works are declarations of love to the body in movement full of freedom, strength, eroticism and wildness, but also of purity, tenderness and vulnerability. The term “tabula rasa” comes from an ancient philosophical idea and describes human beings as a “blank page”. Ohad Naharin takes one of these and writes on it his explorations of the self and the body in the form of touching, kinetic-meditative experiences.
ABOUT TODAY’S PERFORMANCE
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tabula rasa Music Tabula rasa. Double Concerto for 2 violins, string orchestra & prepared piano by Arvo Pärt Choreography, Stage & Light Ohad Naharin Musical Direction Gerrit Prießnitz Costumes Eri Nakamura Staging Matan David Violins Volkhard Steude & Raimund Lissy Piano Asmir Jakupovic
WORLD PREMIERE 6 FEBRUARY 1986 PITTSBURGH BALLET THEATRE
OHAD NAHARIN
“We are turning on the volume of listening to our body, we appreciate small gestures, we are measuring and playing with the texture of our flesh and skin, we might be silly, we can laugh at ourselves. We connect to the sense of ‘plenty of time’, especially when we move fast. We learn to love our sweat, we discover our passion to move and connect it to effort; we discover both the animal that we are and the power of our imagination. We are ‘body builders with soft spines’.”
Ohad Naharin
unsparing beauty
NASTASJA FISCHER
Unusual sounds are coming from the ballet studio – instead of piano music, the beats and familiar melodies of pop songs can be heard outside in the corridors. In the room where the music is coming from a Gaga class is preparing the dancers of the Vienna State Ballet for the rehearsals of Tabula Rasa. The door is firmly shut. No one is allowed to watch: you either join in or keep out. The mirrors that are usually such important tools in day-to-day ballet work are covered by curtains for both training and rehearsals. Working on one of Ohad Naharin’s pieces has its own laws. The Israeli choreographer, one of the most important and innovative dance artists of our time, loves the freedom of movement, its explosive and sensual qualities, with an undeviating passion. While his rules may seem strict at first glance, they are primarily aids to help the dancers get to grips with the fundamentals of what interests and inspires the choreographer: exploring movement and searching for authentic physical expression. Naharin’s artistic and physical research is a process that already spans several decades. After compulsory military service in the Israeli army, where he was a member of an entertainment regiment and performed dances he had created himself, it was not until 1974, when he was 22, that he started training as a dancer with the Batsheva Dance Company in Tel Aviv – an institution founded by its benefactor Batsheva de Rothschild and profoundly influenced by Martha Graham. A period in New York at the Juilliard School and engagements with Martha Graham and Maurice Béjart would follow. He choreographed his first piece for the Kazuko Hirabayshi Studio in 1979 and further creations ensued in New York and
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other cities, and for a variety of ensembles including the Batsheva Dance Company. In these early years the critic Giora Manor wrote excitedly about Naharin, stating that with his work Interim, produced in 1984 by the Batsheva Dance Company, he had choreographed a piece “in which the whole of Jewish history danced across the stage”. Eventually Naharin was appointed the Director of Israel’s leading dance company Batsheva in 1990, a position he retained until 2018 – and he is still associated with the company today as a resident choreographer. Naharin’s visionary and strong willed direction was hugely important, not only for the development of the ensemble but also for the international profile of Israeli contemporary dance as a whole.
“With Gaga, we learn to give up old ideas for better new ones.” OHAD NAHARIN
The name Naharin is associated with a bold choreographic language that has been dis played across an extensive body of work. The Israeli’s dance aesthetic is simultaneously both radical, martial and animalistic yet also gentle and fragile – it brings together horror and beauty, laughter and tears in unsparing and unmistakeable fashion, pulsating collectively while showing the strength and struggles of individuals. Naharin’s choreographies and his expectations of dancers are both equally uncompromising. Testing their own limits, breaking with traditions, pushing their bodies to extremes – the dancers not only have to feel passion and pleasure in movement, but also overcome their own mental and physical inhibitions, accept their fear of the unknown and physical fatigue and grow beyond these in order to progress, in order to find and revel the authentic moment in themselves that Naharin is seeking. Gaga, the movement language he has devised, is a key tool in getting his dancers to the point where they are able to open themselves fully to him and his choreographic visions, to surrender or lose control. It is something that Naharin has been working on now for several decades. Due to a severe back injury, in 1990 the choreographer began looking for new ways of moving and communicating more effectively with his dancers. Now Gaga is an indispensible element of general or professional engagement with the body, movement and training methods: “The language of Gaga came from a belief in the healing, dynamic and constantly changing power of movement”, Naharin writes. Gaga training focusses on activating one’s own body, in which not only pleasure and delight in movement but also appreciable effort are key ingredients in invigorating and strengthening the body. An awareness of effort on a visible individual level is also one of the motors that drives Naharin’s creative work: “I’m not interested in technique and I don’t want what the dancers feel to be based on it. I demand that they don’t hide the effort they are making, which is one of the most beautiful things in my view. […] Anyone who hides their effort is not dancing well”, the choreographer explains, pointing once again to his desire for dancers’ bodies to show openness and integrity, expressing physical passion and untamed strength. 7
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“Connect to sensations” is a basic instruction in Gaga classes that is intended to enable the participants to connect with their feelings, emotions and movements in the space and in life, to evoke a sense of joy and of vitality that helps to overcome physical and mental challenges. The work conducted on a range of physical feelings in Gaga training presents images and associations to stimulate the individual imagination. As Naharin puts it: “It is a method of connecting the individual dancer to the movement without a mirror, purely by listening to their own body. Gaga is a way of training you to be aware of your senses. The dancers combine their technical skills with their imaginative abilities and their passion for movement. In practice it is about endurance, strength, economy of movement, finesse and explosive power. Above all it is about finding the key to the treasures hidden inside you.” Whether conducted with amateurs or professionally trained dancers, a Gaga class is always a communal experience that draws strength from or with the group. Ever since he grew up in Kibbutz Mizra, Naharin has attached immense importance to the notion of community and a joyful awareness of one’s own body as a shared experience: mutual support, the exchange of corporeal knowledge and the ability to listen all play a prominent role. Gaga training’s unique approach to movement also enables dancers to engage differently with choreographic language. Intensive reflection or reconception and a feel for form and structure are crucial here and in Naharin’s works they are combined with the volatile power of the body that comes from letting go and abandoning or throwing yourself into things. Highly charged, energetic, attacking moments can be found in Naharin’s choreographies along with small, almost soundless gestures made to a multifaceted musical soundtrack, which Naharin often mixes himself under the pseudonym Maxim Waratt – for example in Sadeh 21. Eva-Elisabeth Fischer describes his works as “intensely atmospheric creations unfolding in powerful images entirely free from any kind of dance ideology or fashion.” In Hora, first performed in 2009, Naharin tells of the gap between the strange and the familiar to compositions by Isao Tomita, who reinterprets classics with synthesizers. In a green stage set – existing outside time and space – the dancers attempt to articulate a new language, new codes of movement that also draw on familiar physical quotation. The loud and forceful Echad mi yodea, which was originally part of his 1990 choreography Kyr, performed to the eponymous song of questions and answers that is part of the Passover ritual, is one of Naharin’s signature works: still part of the current repertoire and produced with various companies around the globe, it codifies the Jewish past and present in images and movements, highlighting furious rage but also the power of community. By contrast, Naharin’s Virus from 2001, based on Peter Handke’s Offending the Audience, is an abstract, explosive work in which group drills and hectic activity resolve themselves into mild harmony and a utopia of dance – a virtuosic aesthetic manifesto performed to classical, Arab and techno music that also contains reminders of the political situation of Israel and Palestine, for example when the dancers leave fragments of text like “Arabic is legitimate” on blackboards behind them. However, for Naharin, statements about politics or ideology are only “by-products” of his work as an artist and he denies putting forward any explicit position. Instead, the corporeality of the dancers, always sensual, unpolished and free from external control,
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seems to be the choreographer’s primary inspiration. Even if bodies and his creations are able to write stories on stage, or have stories are written into them, Naharin only makes minimal reference to any possible underlying meaning or specific theme. In Naharin’s works, the audience should always discover their own interpretations and not have their ideas influenced in advance by information about the piece and the choreography.
“The discovery has to do with the dance, not with the choreography.” OHAD NAHARIN
If the Gaga movement language is understood as an exploration of the body and the self, then Naharin’s Tabula Rasa is a classic work, even though the choreography was created back in 1986 – before Gaga was invented – in response to a commission from Patricia Wilde for Pittsburgh Ballet. But how has it changed and continued to develop in light of the experiences and possibilities Gaga has yielded? “Through the constant evolution of Gaga we can give a modern interpretation to the movement in Naharin’s older works. Instead of just thinking about the form of a movement, with Gaga, thinking has developed further about how form is perceived, extended or off balance and made us more aware of this. The movement sequences within the choreography of Tabula Rasa have barely changed, but our approach to them is different”, explains Matan David, who has staged the work with the dancers of the Vienna State Ballet. For this creation, Naharin found a congenial partner in Arvo Pärt’s eponymous composition: “I heard that Arvo Pärt had just released a new record entitled Tabula rasa, so I went into a record shop and bought it on vinyl. It is one of the most amazing pieces of music I know.” The calm drama that Pärt’s music exudes, his work with the technical aspects of the canon, the variety of rhythmic tempi, which also provide a more intense experience of time or the sensation of time give the dancers a heartbeat – a heartbeat that is full of vibration, full of emotion and yet so minimalistic and pure. Tabula Rasa is a quiet work for a small cast, which, with the aid of Naharin’s reductionist choreographic language, becomes a meditative experience for the dancers. When the execution of a plié takes place in time that is elongated and sustained or the dancers constantly move through the stage space in a single line, for the audience too, their visual experience of the choreography becomes a haunting, contemplative sight. From the outside, Tabula Rasa is a work that reacts to the music and is structured with canons and larger group arrangements but also with solos, duets and trios which switches in a way that is extremely demanding physically between powerful leaps, with dancers relentlessly throwing themselves on the floor and intimate, inward moments between them. At its innermost heart, however, it is precisely this sensory and corporeal experience – at times purely individual, at times the plural moment of a group – that Naharin seeks to encourage and examine. The dancers themselves must go back to the beginning and start with their own “tabula rasa”: which is just what Gaga and Naharin stand for. 9
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why I ...
OHAD NAHARIN
Sometimes I feel like my brain is on fire and the only way to put the fire out is by daydreaming about choreography. Choreographing is how I go places I have never been before, and, many times, could not even imagine exist. Like people might have felt a few centuries ago when traveling started without knowing where it would end up. The love of moving has been always at the heart of why I dance; it is also partially why I choreograph. I’ve learned that listening to the body is a lot more meaningful than telling it what to do. One can get from dancing a great sense of clarity, explosiveness, and delicacy while allowing us to go far beyond our familiar limits. All these things are necessary ingredients to fuel a good process in and out of the studio. Choreographing allows the pleasure of working with dancers: the sharing, teaching, learning, the realization that I can’t and should not fall in love with my work, yet I can be excited and moved to tears by the dancers’ interpretation of it. Choreographing is having the privilege to be clear and articulate without the need to explain. I love the time invested in the making of the soundtrack for a work. Though dance does not depend on music, the time spent on making of the soundtrack provides hourslong “meditations” where ideas can visit you without you forcing it, while researching the relation of seeing and hearing.
WHY I CHOREOGRAPH
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I love the great level of intimacy I can reach in a process with the people I work with – more than most relationships I’ll ever have out of the studio. I like the by-product of choreographic effort that can oppose conventional and conservative politics and theories that block new solutions and free thinking. I love to choreograph since it’s where I can put my skills, passion, and imagination into one pot, and it also makes me feel sexy. I sleep better during the process of choreographing. I love to discover the different playgrounds for each process with their own codes and rules; then I love teaching the dancers the codes and rules of this new playground. And even more, I like how soon after that, they can show me how to really play it. I like the tech time, the days before the premiere, that last meaningful act of putting the work on its stage, the great feeling when finding the right tension between all the elements in each moment of the work, and then the ease in which I am often happy to admit how wrong I was the next day while looking at it. I like how in choreographing, the process continues long after the premiere, how the “physical disappearing act” of a performance (not necessarily from our memory) enables it to reappear differently the next time.
... choreograph 11
WHY I CHOREOGRAPH
from zero ANNE DO PAÇO
Almost all of the works that we now associate with the name of Arvo Pärt were written after the composer – born in Paide, Estonia in 1935 – had reached his 40th birthday. Having studied at the Tallinn Conservatoire with Heino Eller, Pärt initially worked as a sound engineer for Estonian radio from 1958 to 1967 while he presented his first compositions, which not only displayed the influences of dodecaphony and serialist me thods, but were also avantgarde experiments that resembled Fluxus-like happenings. Following his acknowledgement of his Christian faith with the collage work Credo in 1968 – which was interpreted as an open attack on the Communist regime in Sovietoccupied Estonia – he repeatedly made himself the target of sharp criticism from the authorities and was punished with travel and performance bans. After he had publicly called out official policy at a Congress of the Estonian Composer’s Union, dressed as a “holy fool” with a long-haired wig, Pärt left his homeland in 1980. Travelling via Israel, he emigrated first to Vienna, where he was supported by his friend the composer Alfred Schnittke and Alfred Schlee at Universal Edition had no hesitation in agreeing to publish him. A DAAD scholarship eventually led him to move to West Berlin in 1982, where he settled permanently. However, not only the political situation in his homeland but also fundamental compositional questions had confronted Pärt with boundaries that forced him into making a radical shift in the late 1960s. Writing works such as Collage zu B-A-C-H, Pro et Contra and especially Credo – in which he created a collage of serial aleatoric techniques and the Prelude in C Major from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier that narrowed down ad absurdum – had led him into a dead end and made him realise that
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his personal creative achievements were practically insignificant. Pärt withdrew to the countryside and stopped writing for several years, eventually regaining creative energy from his silence, reflection and an intensive study of the music of the Middle Ages and early Renaissance – Gregorian Chant, the Notre Dame school and classical vocal polyphony. “The first time I heard Gregorian Chant”, he recalled, “it felt like a flash of lightning across the blue night sky. One might almost say that everything I have composed since is a reflection of that lightning-like realisation that at its very core the truth is remarkably simple.” With a short piano piece – Für Alina – that marked his return to the public arena in 1976, Pärt had found himself. This was music in which he broke with all his earlier roots, music that entirely disregarded the aesthetic disputes of the avantgarde, music that appeared timeless, primitive, archetypal, and yet surprisingly new and unique: an “escape into voluntary poverty”, in which Pärt left behind the “entire modern arsenal” and only concentrated on the essentials, having realised that “if a single note is played beautifully, that is enough. This note, quiet or silence” he found calming: “I work with few tools: with one voice, two voices. I make things from primitive materials: from a triad, a certain quality of tone.”
“When I speak of silence, I mean the ‘nothingness’ out of which God created the world.” ARVO PÄRT ON TABULA RASA
The composer’s wife, Nora Pärt – inspired by how the sonic effect of triads reminded her of resonant bells – coined the term “tintinnabuli” for this style of composition (after the Latin “tintinnabulum” = little bells). The essence of this style which – albeit treated in a more flexible and freer form – continues to be a key element of Pärt’s creative work today, is the juxtaposition of melodically free voices that may use all the levels of the diatonic scale with “tintinnabuli” voices which contain only the sequential notes of a triad. These are added to a diatonic melody to multiply its movement or as harmonic colouring. This makes seemingly familiar developments appear in a new light. In the overlap between the horizontal scale and the vertical triad, Pärt saw the sign of the cross – a sonic symbol which reinforced his view that “hidden behind the art of connecting two or three notes lies a cosmic mystery”. Pärt found music’s divine origin in tranquillity – as well as the expression of “divine silence”. Out of this tranquillity he was able to hear his sounds in order to “fill the tranquillity (silence) with sounds worthy of the preceding silence (tranquillity)”. After the piano piece Für Alina Pärt began to apply his new method of composition to larger casts and more expansive forms – but always as it were starting from zero, the unmarked surface of a blank page as described in the title of one of his signature 13
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works from this period: Tabula rasa, written in 1977. His friend, the conductor Eri Klas, had approached Pärt with the request to compose a new work for a concert with Alfred Schnittke’s Concerto Grosso No. 1 for two violins, harpsichord, prepared piano and string orchestra, using the same combination of instruments. Pärt agreed, though he left out the harpsichord, and – using his simple musical system to cast new light on ancient polyphony and reflecting the form of the Baroque double concerto – composed a two-part score that demanded a defenceless, humble profundity from the musicians free from any hint of virtuosity. The members of the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra – the most prominent of whom were the two violin soloists Gidon Kremer and Tatjana Grindenko, but also Alfred Schnittke, who played the prepared piano – were baffled: “We were all a little surprised by how empty the pages of the score were”, Kremer admitted. “Everything was tonal and so transparent. There were so few notes.” And the audience at the world premiere on 30 September 1977 in the Tallinn Polytechnic Institute was also very soon aware that it was experiencing something special. Pärt recalled: “It was wonderful. It was so quiet that no one could breathe or cough because it would have disturbed people. I had the same feeling myself. My heartbeat was so loud, I thought everybody could hear it.” The underlying musical material is based on an A Minor chord in the first movement and a D Minor chord in the second movement. Pärt supplemented the conventional string ensemble with a piano whose sound was manipulated by preparing it with metal screws placed behind the dampers: one of each set of three strings vibrates freely and determines the pitch, while the other two strings produce an alienated tone colour effect. The two movements – Ludus (Con moto) and Silentium (Senza moto) – are intended to contrast in tempo and atmosphere. Ludus (Latin for “game”) is arranged in eight variations and a cadenza. Silentium (Latin for “silence”) is based on a canonical structure in which the various different voices move at different rhythmic speeds – with the bass voice being fastest and the solo violin slowest. The music develops through the tinest alterations, which gives it a trance-like character as if divorced from any sense of real time, while also sharpening the listener’s awareness of the elegance and beauty of the notes, dynamics and tone colours as if examining them under a magnifying glass. In a work like Tabula rasa Pärt has left the idea of an avantgarde – assuming a model of progress and continuous forward development – far behind him because faith in that model is precisely what he has lost.
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ARVO PÄRT
“Before one says something, perhaps it is better to say nothing. My music has emerged only after I have been silent for quite some time, literally silent. For me, ‘silent’ means ‘nothing’ from which God created the world. Ideally, a silent pause is something sacred … If someone approaches silence with love, then this might give birth to music. A composer must often wait a long time for his music. This kind of sublime anticipation is exactly the kind of pause that I value so much.”
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AUS DEN BRIEFEN
Andrés Garcia Torres, Fiona McGee, Alexandra Inculet, Hanno Opperman, Jackson Carroll
Hanno Opperman
Andrés Garcia Torres, Duccio Tariello, Jackson Carroll, Hanno Opperman, Lourenço Ferreira
Ensemble
goldberg variationen Music Goldberg Variations BWV 988 by Johann Sebastian Bach Choreography & Costumes Heinz Spoerli Stage Florian Etti Light Robert Eisenstein Staging Arman Grigoryan & Chris Jensen Piano William Youn
WORLD PREMIERE 7 MARCH 1993 BALLETT DER DEUTSCHEN OPER AM RHEIN DÜSSELDORF DUISBURG
HEINZ SPOERLI
“Bach frees me. He opens me up, so that I as a choreographer can enter into a very special dialogue with him as a composer.”
Heinz Spoerli
panorama of life
ANNE DO PAÇO
36 people on stage. They stand there motionless, gazing into the distance in different directions. Three of them hold their hands in front of their faces and when the music finally starts, they begin to move, at first sparingly and then progressively claiming more and more of the space, breaking up their deep concentration and with it the gathering – and going beyond this to open up the space for a multifaceted dance panorama to the 30 Goldberg Variations BWV 988 by Johann Sebastian Bach, bracketed by their famous aria. In solos, pas de deux, trios and a small number of larger ensembles, a dance unfolds between men and women, women and women, men and men, who are at times friendly mates, at times brothers and sisters, and at times lovers: “There are relationships, couples coming together, separating and returning to neutrality. As in life, people get to know each other and then drift apart again. The older and more mature we become, the more our opinions and experiences change”, Heinz Spoerli commented in an interview with Andrea Amort. Five pas de deux represent particular milestones with in the dramaturgy: if variation 5 is an athletic yet distanced dance in which a man and woman act alongside each other, in variation 11 a cautious intimacy begins to develop between them. The culmination points then occur in variations 15, 21 and 25, to each of which Heinz Spoerli has one female and one male dancer touchingly probe the depths of human relationships in three great lyrical scenes. “It is a work that played an important role within the canon of my own creations and at the time it gave me courage to go further”, is Heinz Spoerli’s assessment of his Gold-
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berg-Variationen, created in 1993 for his company at that time, the Ballett der Deutschen Oper am Rhein Düsseldorf Duisburg. More Bach ballets followed for his company in Zurich: ... und mied den Wind (1999) and In den Winden im Nichts (2003), each to three of the six solo cello Suites, and Wäre heute morgen und gestern jetzt (2009) to Bach’s Magnificat BWV 243 and other instrumental works, including the 2nd Brandenburg Concerto BWV 1047. The music of Johann Sebastian Bach had previously inspired dances by numerous choreographers since the early 20th century. After the sketched outline by Vaslav Nijinsky in collaboration with Serge Diaghilev for the Ballets Russes in 1913 remained unperformed, Doris Humphrey’s Air for the G string from 1928 to the air from the Orchestral Suite BWV 1068 is widely regarded as the first ever Bach choreography, followed, amongst others, by George Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco from 1941, in which the structures of the music corresponded very closely with Balanchine’s choreographic compositions of bodies and space. John Neumeier explored the St. Matthew Passion (1981) and most recently the Mass in B minor BWV 232 in his full-length ballet Dona Nobis Pacem (2022) to create two great works of ballet theatre – to name just a few examples. Only in more recent times have dance creatives shown a more pronounced interest in the large, complex cycles of chamber music, including The Art of the Fuge, to which, amongst others, Martin Schläpfer created a full-length ballet in 2002, and the Goldberg Variations. Credit for being the first milestone in the exploration of Bach’s Clavier-Übung goes to The Goldberg Variations, staged by Jerome Robbins with New York City Ballet in 1971 – a homage to Bach and testimony to Robbins’ inexhaustible wealth of invention in a neoclassicism that was enriched with quoted patterns of court movement as well as costume designs that evoked echoes of Bach’s time. In a very different vein, the American movement explorer and one of the founders of the method of contact improvisation Steve Paxton was inspired by the recording by Glenn Gould to stage improvisations as a continually changing work-in-progress from 1984 to 1992 that ultimately became fixed in a final recording – which the New York dance critic Deborah Jowitt described as one of the most “mysterious and profound” readings of Bach’s score. In 1994, a year after Heinz Spoerli, Joachim Schlömer was inspired by Bach’s Clavier-Übung to create the ritualised dance theatre Und in der Ferne die Nacht in Weimar. And in 2005 Marie Chouinard produced her “exercise in freedom” body_remix/gOLDBERG_vARIATIONS, in which she “extended” the dancers’ bodies with crutches, rollators and prostheses, and did the same to Bach’s composition by having Louis Dufort manipulate the Glenn Gould recording electronically. By contrast, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker carried out an extremely close dialogue with the original score (she had already used the tools of dance to explore all six Suites for solo cello BWV 1007–1012 in her 2017 project Mitten wir im Leben) in her self-performed solo, Goldberg, in 2020, searching for a form of dance that – like Bach’s music – “is capable of adaptability and flexibility while at the same time retaining an immutable core”. Music afficionados do not immediately associate Bach’s Goldberg Variations with ballet or dance: the individual pieces have such a high degree of abstraction that they offer the listener nothing substantial, a state of affairs that – as the few examples cited 25
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from what is now an extensive repertoire of Bach choreographies show – tends to inspire dance artists, who are less interested in concrete narratives than in the interactions between movement, bodies, space and music. As a ballet of considerable scale with the quality of its choreography, dramaturgical construction and a large ensemble cast, Heinz Spoerli’s Goldberg-Variationen continues to occupy a central position within this field: “The ballet exudes power and rigour [...]. In its apparent directness the work demonstrates maturity and a high degree of thought”, wrote the Spanish dance critic Roger Salas. Heinz Spoerli has only entrusted his Goldberg-Variationen to very few ballet companies. After the world premiere in Düsseldorf, it became a mainstay of the repertoire of his Zürcher Ballett from 1996 to 2012. Otherwise it has been danced in 2001 by the Ballett der Deutschen Oper Berlin, in 2012 by the Ballet du Rhin in Strasbourg and 2018 by the Teatro alla Scala Ballet Company in Milan – with the stage and costume designs only ever slightly adapted from Keso Dekker’s design for the world premiere. For the Berlin staging, Hans Schavernoch was responsible for the stage and Claudia Binder for the costumes, while for the production at the Ballet du Rhin, Heinz Spoerli himself designed the vibrant multicoloured leotards modelled on the dancers’ bodies, as is also the case now at the Vienna State Ballet, where his long-standing artistic partner Florian Etti has once again designed the set. Structured analogously to the music, which is always performed live – for him the interplay between the dancers and a pianist is crucial –, Heinz Spoerli allows his choreography to unfold scene by scene, variation by variation, with ever new combinations of dancers. Every single section is conceived as an autonomous miniature, every variation is given its own space – while nevertheless overall forming “a choreographic arc that stretches from the beginning to our end”, the choreographer explains. The music provides Heinz Spoerli with the framework, the rhythm, the tempo, it is the mood for a cycle that – notwithstanding a dramaturgy committed to abstraction – is about human relationships. Behind the nuanced correspondence between movement and music within the space, psychological portraits emerge that tell of exuberant joie de vivre and silent melancholy, competitive togetherness and solitude, desire and pain – in movements of great elegance and harmony but also virtuosic athleticism and a humour all of its own which reveal the “dancemaker” – to use the term that Heinz Spoerli applies to himself – to be an astute observer of people. His language of movement can be described as an individual yet strict form of neoclassicism based on a richly varied application of the vocabulary of danse d’école, that never dominates the music but, without following it slavishly, encounters it on equal terms in a sensitive and free form of symbiosis, spiritedly entwined with it in counterpoint. Emphasis is placed on a visually clear body image with long lines and a phrasing which often follows the musical lines. For this extremely pure choreography where no one can hide, the dancers have to contribute – in Heinz Spoerli’s words – “an excellent, highly refined technique, charisma, and a good ear for music”. Intensive dialogue between expression, musicality and dance technique is essential for the musicmaking he does with the body through movements that extend into the flow of the music in their own unique way.
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WILLIAM YOUN
“The Goldberg Variations are a great dance. They are in ¾ time, contain dance movements such as the sarabande, the minuet, the gigue, a polonaise – and it is music full of joie de vivre. During the very intensive rehearsals for the Vienna State Ballet’s production, I quickly realised that the choreography changed the piece for me. I don’t just mean that the tempo has to be stable for the dancers. There’s always a lot of talk about that, but it’s also about something quite different: for example the fact that dance fills the silence, which is also what music is made of, with movement, it counts the ‘beat of silence’, which gives it a different meaning, but also a different aesthetic. For me, playing the Goldberg Variations for dance therefore also means getting a different sense of time. On the concert podium, I can decide on these questions for myself, and I do so from an idea that I have developed from thinking about this music for a long time. But now I am part of a company and I play the Goldberg Variations as if I were playing chamber music. It’s a dialogue with what I see on stage. And what I see is not just people dancing, but Bach’s music. It’s a very interesting experience. For me, the Goldberg Variations have a lot to do with time, with a certain image of man. Each variation is like a new day. You are always yourself, but each day brings something new. And at the very end, Bach returns to the beginning with the repetition of the aria. It is the same music, but one that has been completely transformed by all that you have experienced through the 30 variations. It’s a journey through a whole life – and that’s what I see in Heinz Spoerli’s choreography.”
HEINZ SPOERLI
“When you move, you express yourself. Without words. They who dance tell a story. Their own. Understandable for others, across all language barriers. Dance is something cosmopolitan, something multicultural. It connects people, builds bridges between nations and different mentalities. Everywhere in the world people dance. Out of joy and love of life. Sometimes also to relieve stress or sadness. Dancing means letting go and letting in at the same time and allows people to experience themselves differently.
Aesthetics, power, beauty, sensuality, and harmony find expression in dance. But also, sadness, melancholy, despair, or hope. Dance is an amplifier for the full range of emotions. Movement in the flow of music – generated by one’s own body. Dance is inside of people and has an enormous effect. Because in dancing, feelings and body form a symbiosis that gets by without words and yet finds its own language. A strong language that tells stories.”
to delight the spirits SEBASTIAN KIEFER
“Piano exercise / consisting / of an / ARIA / with diverse variations / for the harpsichord / with 2 manuals. / To delight the spirits / of connoisseurs by / Johann Sebastian Bach / composer to the Royal Court of Poland and Electoral Court of Saxony / Kapellmeister and Director of / Choral Music in Leipzig.” This is the original title of one of the most significant cycles of variations in the keyboard repertoire. The fact that it represents part four of the Clavier-Übung receives as little attention as its year of publication (1742). Its conventional title Goldberg Variations is derived from Johann Nikolaus Forkel’s account of how the work came to be written in his book published in 1802 Johann Sebastian Bach. His Life, Art and Work: in 1737, the Russian ambassador to the Electoral Court in Dresden, Heinrich Carl, Count Keyserlingk, had been so impressed by the highly musical son of a Danzig instrument maker Johann Gottlieb Goldberg that he arranged for Johann Sebastian Bach to give him lessons. And Bach probably wrote what posterity has come to call the Goldberg Variations for the extravagant talents of this remarkable young man, aged just thirteen. As his Excellency was unwell, he told Bach – according to Forkel – “that he would like some piano pieces for his Goldberg that were gentle and cheerful in nature that might lighten some of his sleepless nights. Bach felt that variations could best fulfil this request. But just as all his works around this time were model pieces, these variations under his signature became the same. However, he only wrote a single work of this kind. From then on, the Count called them his variations. He never tired of hearing them and for a long time, whenever he had a sleepless night he would say: dear Goldberg, play me one of my variations.” Bach undoubtedly owed the noble diplomat a debt of gratitude: Keyserlingk was partly responsible for Bach being awarded the title of Court Composer in 1736. It is possible that Bach gave his benefactor the (reworked?) score of a collection that had been begun for an entirely different purpose – to demonstrate his qualifications to be Court Composer, for example. This is supported by the fact that the very first variation, while untitled, is a polonaise, a fashionable dance of the time that Bach otherwise avoided. As the Electors of Dresden had also been Kings of Poland since 1697, it is
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tempting to suppose that the Goldberg Variations were also an endorsement of the Saxon rulers’ claims to power. Unlike George Frideric Handel, Dietrich Buxtehude and Johann Pachelbel, Bach had rarely written variations before. His reassessment of this genre should also be seen in the context of the later Bach’s preference for cycles on a single theme, such as the Canonic Variations on “Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her”, The Musical Offering and The Art of the Fugue.
On the Form The Goldberg Variations are arranged as a sequence of groups, each of three variations, the first part of which forms a free, polyphonic piece usually dance-like in character, followed by a virtuoso two-part variation and a canon. (Only in the first group, the middle part has moved to take the first position.) Bach repeatedly created connections between individual variations that either followed each other directly or were more distant, but exchanged some first and second movements in a group with those from others, without destroying the overall concept. Only the third movements, the canons, each followed a strict order: variation 3 is a canon in unison (the second part follows at the same pitch as the first), variation 6 is a canon at the (major) second, and from there the distances of the intervals at which the themes begin increase progressively with every third variation as far as a canon at the (major) ninth. The bass lines are not canon lines, but provide a foundation for the canonical play of the upper lines. For centuries the canon had been regarded as the purest and most respected form of erudite composition. In the years from around 1737 onwards, in the course of his comprehensive studies of strict counterpoint, Bach made this barely surviving tradition his own and integrated it into his works. The Goldberg Variations contain only free and skilfully crafted interval canons, some of which have a dance-like character. Only the canons at the fourth and fifth, which bracket the middle of the octave, and are therefore complementary, mirroring each other in various respects, are inverted canons (in which the second part reverses the theme). Bach would soon aspire to more complex and purer forms: in a hand-written score that was not rediscovered until 1975 he had noted in a postscript “various canons on the first eight fundamental notes of the preceding aria” (i.e. the theme of the Goldberg Variations). They are valuable proof of the route Bach took to his late works, to the highly complex Canonical Variations on “Vom Himmel hoch” and the Musical Offering. The groups of three and the ordering of the canons with progressive intervals are the buttresses that support the Goldberg Variations. Bach gave them an overall shape by dividing them in two: variation 16 is an overture in the French style, that introduces Part Two. This creates two halves, each with 15 movements, that are framed by the theme that appears at the beginning and end: the aria. According to Baroque convention, counting could start either from the aria or from the first variation – so the number of movements is the same as the number of bars in the theme, 2 x 16. 31
TO DELIGHT THE SPIRITS
Theme, Aria and Bass The Goldberg Variations are not primarily variations on the aria, as the title might suggest, but variations on a bassline, a structure of notes that is preserved in every movement. One of their particular charms is that the bass theme is never heard in its primary form or unaccompanied, so that the theme itself is also the first variation. The bassline is derived from a traditional and standardised model of improvisation and variation used by, among others, Henry Purcell, François Couperin and Johann Christoph Bach. The aria, the singable, sarabande-like melody over the top of this, can already be found in the Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach. Its shape and ornamentation are sufficiently close to French models that Bach’s authorship has been disputed on several occasions. However much Bach may have adapted pre-existing patterns – it is certain that the piece’s complex final form, a highly intricate combination of small variations of surprising complexity for all their singable clarity, is by Bach himself. Particles of this melody can be heard hidden in several variations but not at all in many of them, especially the virtuoso two-part movements. Only the two sarabandes in the cycle (variations 13 and 25), richly ornamented and powerfully expressive like the dances of the same title in Bach’s suites, reprise the aria directly. No. 25, the second of these pieces, enriches the chromatics of the fiorituras to the extreme, displaying an unparalleled boldness of harmony whose uniquely expressive quality was recognised by Ludwig van Beethoven and adopted for his Diabelli Variations. One further detail speaks for Bach’s authorship of the aria: its ending abandons the sarabande rhythms and concludes with continuous small note values, simple repetitive figures. This channeling into pure figuration is repeated at the end of the entire cycle: the only two-part canon at the ninth (variation 27) is considerably more casual and sparser than all those that preceded it. This less strict approach continues in variation 28: this is not a dance- or suite-like movement but a variation of trills. Variation 29 forms a toccata-like, pianistically brilliant stretta. Then what follows in variation 30 is not an intensification and dissolution into virtuoso, but – as surprising as it is humorous – a quodlibet, a kind of improvised music that cites familiar melodies. Here Bach quotes two folk tunes that he also employs in the Peasant Cantata BWV 212 he wrote in 1742 (“Ich bin so lang nicht bei dir gewest, ruck her, ruck her”; “Kraut und Rüben haben mich vertrieben / hätt die Mutter Fleisch gekocht, so wär’ ich länger blieben”), the first of which was a popular instrumental finale for dances at the time. However, Bach also had structural reasons to include them here: the melody’s rise one step at a time is a miniaturised reversal of the ostinato opening, whose contours also strongly resemble the beginning of the aria, and the second folk tune can act as a counterpoint to the first. The result is a final piece that bids farewell lightly and wittily while at the same time being full of contrapuntal tricks. Whether the line “Ich bin so lang nicht bei dir gewest” (“I haven’t been with you for so long”) is also intended as a knowing reference to the disappearance of the aria melody that returns only now, after the final variation, remains to be seen. With this compact combination of playfulness and erudition, a finale is created that a “scholarly” canon – which is what the architecture would lead one to expect – could never have achieved.
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MARTIN GECK
“In the Goldberg Variations, instrumental music grows wings – aesthetically speaking: it becomes autonomous. It is no longer the little sister of opera, song and cantata, which until then had been able to say everything more clearly. Instead, it finds a language that can express what it wants; that ventures into depths that remain closed to spoken language; that can even become humorous, ironic or insinuating, thus speaking ‘double talk’.”
AUS DEN BRIEFEN
Olga Esina, Brendan Saye
Liudmila Konovalova, Marcos Menha
Arne Vandervelde, Davide Dato, Giorgio Fourés, Ensemble
Masayu Kimoto
Géraud Wielick, Daniel Vizcayo
Alexey Popov, Claudine Schoch
Hyo-Jung Kang
Ohad Naharin – Choreography, Stage & Light Tabula Rasa Ohad Naharin, born in 1952 in Kibbutz Mizra, began his dance training with Batsheva Dance Company in 1974. During his first year with the Company, Martha Graham singled out Naharin for his talent and invited him to join her own company in New York. He went on to perform with Israel’s Bat-Dor Dance Company and Maurice Béjart’s Ballet du XXe Siècle. Naharin returned to New York in 1979, making his choreographic debut at the Kazuko Hirabayshi studio. From 1980 until 1990, he has presented his works in New York and abroad and was invited to create works for different companies, including the Batsheva and the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company as well as Nederlands Dans Theater. At the same time, together with his first wife Mari Kajiwara, who was an important artistic partner until her death in 2001, he worked in New York with a group of dancers on various projects. From 1990 to 2018 Ohad Naharin was Artistic Director of the Bat sheva Dance Company and is still the company’s house choreographer. Furthermore, his works have been performed by prominent international companies including Ballet de l’Opéra de Paris, Ballet de l’Opéra de Lyon, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Alvin Ailey Dance Theater, Atlanta Ballet, Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet New York, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Balé da Cidade de São Paulo, Compañía Nacional de Danza, Nederlands Dans Theater, Cullberg Ballet, Finnish National Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet, Ballett am Rhein and more. Alongside his work as a choreographer, Ohad Naharin developed Gaga, an innovative movement language, which is not only the daily basis of the training of the dancers from Batsheva Dance Company but is also taught to professional dancers and amateurs worldwide by certified teachers. Naharin trained in music throughout his youth, and he has often put these skills to use. He cooperated with the Israeli rock group The Tractor’s Revenge, Avi Belleli and Dan Makov, Ivri Lider and Grischa Lichtenberger. Under the pseudonym Maxim Waratt he composed the music and soundtracks for numerous productions. Ohad Naharin has won many awards and honors, namely the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (1998), the Israel Prize for dance (2005), the EMET Prize (2009), the Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement (2009), the Carina Ari Medal and the Israel Ministry of Culture Award for Lifetime Achievement (2016). He received Honorary doctorates by the Weizmann Institute of Science, Hebrew University, Juilliard School New York, and Ben Gurion University of the Negev.
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Heinz Spoerli – Choreography & Costumes Goldberg-Variationen Heinz Spoerli trained with Walter Kleiber and his first engagement was with the ballet of Waclaw Orlikowsky at the theatre in his home town of Basel. Between 1963 and 1973 he danced as a soloist with the ballet of the Bühnen der Stadt Köln under Todd Bolender, with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens in Montreal, with the Ballett Basel and the Ballet of the Grand Théâtre de Genève. After his first choreographic works, he established himself as a choreographer at the Grand Théâtre de Genève with the enormous success of his world premiere Le chemin in 1972. Directing three distinctive ensembles in the following decades – the Basel Ballet (1973–1991), the Ballett der Deutschen Oper am Rhein Düsseldorf Duisburg (1991–1996) and the Zurich Ballet (1996–2012) – he distinguished himself also as one of the leading ballet directors. His extensive œuvre ranges from new interpretations of classical ballets such as La Fille mal gardée, Giselle, Coppélia, Romeo and Juliet, The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Don Quixote and Raymonda to his own creations such as Chäs, Miniatures, Dead End, Loops, Josephslegende and Goldberg-Variationen. Among the most important works of his Zurich period are ... und mied den Wind, Approaching Clouds, In den Winden im Nichts, Allem nah, alles fern, moZART, Les débauches du rêve, Peer Gynt and Das Lied von der Erde. Heinz Spoerli has made guest appearances at the Opéra de Paris, Teatro alla Scala, in Berlin, Hong Kong, Lisbon, Stockholm, Stuttgart, Mulhouse and Graz. At the 2012 Salzburg Festival, he created a ballet programme and the choreography for Sven-Eric Bechtolf's production of Richard Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos in co-production with the Vienna State Opera. Heinz Spoerli’s links with Vienna go back to the 1970s, when he created Faschingsschwank aus Wien for the Vienna Ballet Festival in 1977 and the choreography for a Boccaccio production at the Volksoper. In 1990, his Pulcinella premiered at the Vienna State Opera, as did his choreography for the musical Freudiana at the Theater an der Wien. Furthermore, he created the dance interludes for the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s concerts in 1996 and 1998. In 1982 Heinz Spoerli was awarded the Hans-Reinhart Ring, Switzerland’s highest theatre prize at the time. This was followed by the Art Prize of the City of Basel in 1991, the Jacob Burckhardt Prize in 1995, the Zurich Art Prize in 2007, the German Dance Prize and the German Critics’ Prize in 2009, the Zurich Festival Prize and the A Life for Dance Award of the Miami International Ballet Festival in 2012.
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GERRIT PRIESSNITZ – Musical Direction Tabula Rasa Born in Bonn, Gerrit Prießnitz is a sought-after guest on the podium of various international orchestras and opera houses. His recent debuts have included the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, the Belgrade Philharmonic and the Filharmonie Brno. In 2024, he will take the podium for the first time at the Staatsphilharmonie Nuremberg, the Bochum Symphony Orchestra and the Tyrolean Symphony Orchestra Innsbruck. After graduating with distinction from the University “Mozarteum” Salzburg, he was first engaged at the Theater Erfurt. Subsequently, he was associated with the Vienna Volksoper in changing positions from 2006 to 2023, where he conducted a wide-ranging repertoire from Mozart to Berlioz or Strauss to Britten, Henze, Trojahn and Glanert. In 2018/19 Gerrit Prießnitz served as “Principal Guest Conductor” of the Theater Chemnitz. Guest appearances have taken him repeatedly to the Vienna State Opera, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, to Japan and South Korea, the Hamburg State Opera and the Cologne Opera, the Bruckner Orchestra and the Landestheater Linz, to Lucerne, Sofia, Bologna, Bari, Córdoba, the Mörbisch Lake Festival and various German orchestras and opera houses: MDR Symphony Orchestra Leipzig, Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, Aalto Theater Essen, Munich Radio Orchestra, Staatskapelle Halle, Beethovenfest Bonn, Augsburg State Theater, Wuppertal Symphony Orchestra, Württemberg Philharmonic Orchestra Reutlingen, North German Philharmonic Orchestra Rostock, Brandenburg State Orchestra, Dortmund Philharmonic Orchestra and others. CD and DVD productions are available on Sony Classical and Unitel, among others. Since fall 2017 he held a lectureship in opera at the Musik und Kunst Privatuniversität der Stadt Wien (MUK). In 2023 Gerrit Prießnitz took up a professorship at the Institute for Music Theatre at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (KUG).
BIOGRAPHIES
WILLIAM YOUN – Piano Goldberg-Variationen William Youn, born in Korea in 1982, is one of the most promising pianists of his generation. He began his studies in Seoul, followed by a move to the USA at the New England Conservatory in Boston at the age of 13. At 18, he was accepted into Karl-Heinz Kämmerling’s legendary pianist class at the Hanover University of Music. As a scholarship holder at the Piano Academy Lake Como, William Youn worked with artists such as Dmitri Bashkirov, Andreas Staier, William Grant Naboré and Menahem Pressler. Today William Youn performs internationally from Berlin via Seoul to New York with major orchestras, including Cleveland Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Munich Chamber Orchestra, National Orchestra of Belgium, Mariinsky Theatre and Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, and makes regular music appearances in renowned concert halls, including the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Pierre Boulez Saal Berlin, Prinzregententheater Munich, Konzerthaus Wien, Wigmore Hall London, Toppan Hall Tokyo and Seoul Arts Center, or at festivals such as the Schubertiade Schwarzenberg, SchleswigHolstein Music Festival, Rheingau Music Festival, Heidelberger Frühling and MDR Musiksommer. On the historic fortepiano William Youn played at venues, such as the Mecklenburg Vorpommern Festival, Mozart Festival in Würzburg and Schwetzingen SWR Festival. As keen chamber musician, William Youn enjoys close collaborations with violist Nils Mönkemeyer, clarinetist Sabine Meyer, cellist Julian Steckel, violinists Carolin Widmann and Veronika Eberle, the Aris Quartet and the author Ferdinand von Schirach. William Youn’s extensive discography includes recordings on Sony Classical, Oehms Classics and ECM. Most recently, after several recordings with Nils Mönkemeyer and his solo album Schumann – Liszt – Schubert, he has started a new project for Sony Classical in 2020 to record all the Schubert piano sonatas. His Mozart sonata cycle, previously released by Oehms Classics was highly praised in the press and awarded numerous prizes.
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Goldberg-Variationen Ohad Naharin / Heinz Spoerli Season 2023/24 PUBLISHER Vienna State Opera GmbH, Opernring 2, 1010 Vienna General Director: Dr. Bogdan Roščić Administrative Director: Dr. Petra Bohuslav Director & Chief Choreographer Vienna State Ballet: Martin Schläpfer Managing Director Vienna State Ballet: Mag. Simone Wohinz Editorial Team: Mag. Anne do Paço, Nastasja Fischer MA Design & Concept: Fons Hickmann M23, Berlin Image Concept Cover: Martin Conrads Layout & Type Setting: Miwa Meusburger Producer: Print Alliance HAV Produktions GmbH, Bad Vöslau PERFORMING RIGHTS For the choreographies Tabula Rasa © Ohad Naharin represented by Gaga Movement Ltd, Tel-Aviv Goldberg-Variationen © Heinz Spoerli for Tabula rasa by Arvo Pärt: © Universal Edition AG, Wien for Schott Music GmbH & Co. KG. Mainz TEXT REFERENCES About today’s performance as well as the texts from Nastasja Fischer, Anne do Paço (English translation: David Tushingham) and William Youn (English translation: Nastasja Fischer) are original contributions for this programme booklet. Reprint only with the permission of the Vienna State Ballet/Dramaturgy. P. 4: quoted after batsheva.co.il/en/gaga / pp. 10 f: Ohad Naharin: Why I choreograph. In: Dance Magazine 87/9, September 2013. Reprint with kind permission by Ohad Naharin & provided by Dance Magazine / p. 15: quoted after Jeffers Engelhardt: Perspectives on Arvo Pärt after 1980. The Cambridge Companion to Arvo Pärt. Cambridge 2012 / p. 22: Heinz Spoerli in an interview about the Viennese production of Goldberg-Variationen / pp. 28 f: quoted after spoerli.ch / pp. 30 f.: Sebastian Kiefer: Johann Gottlieb Goldberg and Goldberg-Variationen (BWV 988). In: Bach-Handbuch. Vol. 6: Das Bach-Lexikon. Edited by Michael Heinemann under collaboration with Stephan Franke, Sven Hiemke & Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen. Laaber 2000 (English translation: David Tushingham) / p. 33: Martin Geck: Bach. Leben und Werk. Reinbek bei Hamburg 2000 (English translation: Anne do Paço).
PHOTO CREDITS Cover: Cold Mountain © Michael Lange / Hartmann Books (with kind permission of the photographer) / all stage photos photographed in April & May 2023 © Ashley Taylor / pp. 5, 42: © Ilya Melnikov / pp. 23, 43: © Peter Schnetz / p. 44: © Barbara Pálffy / p. 45: © Irène Zandel Right Owners who could not be reached are requested to contact the editorial team for the purpose of subsequent legal reconciliation.
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