Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra conducted by Jörg Widmannräsonanz – Stifterkonzert
This event is in the past.
Wolfgang Rhim’s explosive, extensive Tutuguri is an imaginative, monumental poème dansé of unbridled energy. Antonin Artaud’s vision of ritual theatre led Rhim to a radical conclusion: the music follows solely its own “internal logic” until it ventures into the atavistic, the unheard, an existential and escalating ritual of sound.
This event is in the past.
Wolfgang Rhim’s explosive, extensive Tutuguri is an imaginative, monumental poème dansé of unbridled energy. Antonin Artaud’s vision of ritual theatre led Rhim to a radical conclusion: the music follows solely its own “internal logic” until it ventures into the atavistic, the unheard, an existential and escalating ritual of sound.
A peyote ceremony of the indigenous Mexican Tarahumara tribe that the notorious French performer, poet and theatre revolutionary Antonin Artaud attended in the 1930s inspired him to write a literary text brimming with archaic rituals and intoxicating hallucinations.
“On first reading Artaud’s text: a torrent, a cascade of music.”
Some 50 years later, this text inspired Wolfgang Rihm to conceive of music “in its raw state” – music that was not intended to be anything other “than itself, stripped bare”.
Musica viva concertgoers will never forget the explosive force of Tutuguri 13 years ago, performed at the Gasteig by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Kent Nagano. To mark the opening of the 2026/27 musica viva season, Tutuguri can once again be heard in Munich, this time with the students of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra – founded by Pierre Boulez – under the baton of Jörg Widmann.
This guest performance of this extraordinary production from Lucerne is made possible by the räsonanz – Stifterkonzertinitiative, an initiative launched in 2016 by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation in collaboration with the Bavarian Radio’s musica viva and the Lucerne Festival.
There will be a pre-concert talk at 5.45 PM
Programme
Wolfgang Rihm (1952–2024): Tutuguri, for large orchestra, percussionist, recorded choir and narrator (1980–82) Poème dansé, based on the poem Tutuguri from the radio play Pour en finir avec le jugement de dieu by Antonin Artaud
- Image I (invocation … the black hole …)
- Image II (black and red dances … the horse …)
- Image III (the Peyote Dance … the last sun … the screaming man …)
- Image IV (crosses … the horseshoe … the six men … the seventh …)
With
- Michael Engelhardt, narrator
