ruhrtriennale_2020_programmbuch

The centrepiece of Christoph Marthaler’s music theatre creation is Alexander
Scriabin’s orchestral work first performed in 1908 Le Poème de l’Extase
(The Poem of Ecstasy). An uncompromising and euphoric large-scale composition,
written in a confusing period of transition: at the beginning of the
20th century new levels of growth produced a fundamental change in the
production and working conditions in mines, pits and factories: the capitalist
financial system and company monopolies exacerbated the unequal
distribution of wealth and caused an increasing sense of disorientation in
Western societies. This is a condition that the writer Franz Kafka alludes to
in his book Der Verschollene (The Man Who Disappeared). This fragment of
a novel in which Kafka describes an emigrant to America who is in danger
of being lost in the land of unlimited opportunities, is full of the disconcerting
sounds and rhythms of the New World. The novel’s individual episodes
seem resemble sections of a musical composition: they are polyphonic,
with richly contrasting instrumentation, showy, fragile, and packed with introductions,
highlights, repetitions, pauses and false cadences. This association
is highlighted in Christoph Marthaler’s production by bringing
together motifs from Kafka’s narrative with Scriabin’s Poème and works
by the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók. Indeed Marthaler goes further,
inventing a work of music theatre in which not the single protagonist of a
novel but the entire ensemble of the Bochumer Symphoniker is set in motion
to counteract the forces of a spreading sense of loss. Together the musicians
– almost a hundred of them – reach the enigmatic “Nature Theatre
of Oklahoma” and are not a little surprised that this is a place where work
is also conducted “underground”. To all appearances they are concerned
with mining previously undiscovered raw materials. No one can say whether
these are organic, inorganic or utopian in origin. The only thing that is
certain is that recovering them requires a large orchestra. At least. Two
would be better.
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