A new start at the crematorium

A blinking monster with blue teeth in the quiet of the evening: this is how the Old Crematorium presents itself between the trees of Sihlfeld cemetery. A strange place for a concert, but the building has long been used only as a funeral hall and for cultural events. Nevertheless, it has a reverent and eerie atmosphere. This is how it might once have been when the Habsburg family went to the Hofburg Chapel on Good Friday to listen to an oratorio for the Holy Sepulchre of Emperor Leopold I. As in the Azione Sacra, this time it was also about, if not a world redemption, then at least a new beginning, a "loophole in time", the "gap" of which the title of the work speaks. Is someone trying to escape an ominous present?

Dream and wonder

Katharina Rosenberger's "performance installation" premiered at La Bâtie in Geneva at the beginning of September, while the Zurich premiere took place on September 28 and 29 - quite appropriately - in Sihlfeld. For there is a quiet, albeit respectful provocation in the choice of this location, where Ash Wednesday is realized. We enter the building through the main entrance. In the central hall, named Salle d'écriture, a soft musical prologue can be heard. The introduction is accompanied by texts by Franz Kafka and Hannah Arendt. Kafka's "He" is beset by two forces, one pushing him forward from the source, the other holding him back. At some point - according to his dream - he will have to rise above his struggling opponents. Arendt's vision, on the other hand, speaks of "miracles" in the political sphere and of hope in the acting human being. You can also answer questions on pieces of paper: What experience would you like to take with you to another galaxy? Why is a new beginning so difficult?

Magnificently equipped gap

Then three large side rooms open up. On the left is the "Transience" room with a large, primordial animal-like structure, whose metallic percussion instruments are played by Brian Archinal. To the right is the "Archive" full of mothballed exhibits, an antique cabinet of curiosities; you can listen to vinyl records on record players. In a third room, where the incineration hall used to be, you can experience a "Time Machine", a pink-violet electronic theater of eternal music, a nirvana.

These beautifully designed and color-saturated, almost baroque rooms are explored by the audience. It is impressive what the composer has put together with director Matthias Rebstock and a dedicated multimedia collective - real teamwork. The Ensemble Contrechamps from Geneva and the Collegium Novum Zurich have once again successfully joined forces here, and this also reflects the composer's biography. The Zurich-based composer, co-director of the Sonic Matter festival, teaches composition at the Haute école de musique in Geneva.

Hardly redeemable construct

However, one wonders where the connections between all these impressions may lie and hopes for the final act, when everyone has gathered again in the Salle d'écriture. There one hears an expansive, drone-like music, full of inner pathos, melodious and yet pervasive. Is this the "gap", the "secret portal to other worlds", is this the "new beginning"? It is the crux of such installative, post-dramatic music theater productions that they often lack coherence and inevitability. The end and the new beginning do not consistently emerge from the four rooms. A textual-musical-scenic construct is stretched out that seems overloaded and whose search ultimately leads nowhere. Aesthetically, too, we find ourselves in a clinch: what sense of community does this new beginning require? How beautiful should it sound so that it doesn't immediately reek of New Age? So you leave the building with many unanswered questions. But certainly also: it is something deeply human to believe in miracles, hope dies last.

https://the-gap.space/