Mensch, Musik! #7
Cities Land (in) Ocean

with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin (RSB)

Exploited, poisoned and covered with bombs. Human destructiveness and its consequences is the theme of the "Mensch, Musik! #7" performance. While Claude Debussy could still look romantically-naively at nature with "La Mer", humankind has in the meantime polluted and littered the sea, the source of all life. Animals and insects (Christopher Cerrone, "The Insects became Magnetic") are dying out. Hundreds of thousands of people found death in one of the worst man-made disasters, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Krszysztof Penderecki, "Threnos").

The young Japanese pianist Akiko also died in Hiroshima, but her piano is still played for concerts today - still with glass splinters from the atomic blast wave in its body. Dai Fujikura's "Akiko's Diary" is about this piano and Akiko's preserved diary. tauchgold lets actress Fritzi Haberlandt tell her story.

The performance, however, is not content with lamentations and accusations, but searches for possibilities of healing with the means of art. In her composition "Tikkun," Sarah Nemtsov recalls the Jewish ethical commandment "Tikkun Olam," repair of the world, as the task of every thinking person. Catalyst artist Natalie Szende closes the circle to the sea as our origin with her meditative commissioned composition "Oceanic Oscillations". With a humorous sense of the absurd and an exploratory look at the many unresolved questions, tauchgold probes the state of our world. Questions, wonders, questions again … and doesn't give up.

In partnership with Catalyst - Institute for Creative Arts and Technology.

Yu Kosuge - piano
Natalie Szende (catalyst) - composition & synthesizer
Eliad Wagner (catalyst) - composition & synthesizer
Fritzi Haberlandt - acting
Vidina Popov - acting
Svenja Liesau - acting

Roderick Cox - conductor
Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin
tauchgold - text, concept, direction

Premiere: 22.04.2023, Haus des Rundfunks, Berlin