Sterben

What happens after death? This question has occupied the thoughts of mankind since its existence. They believe in gods and paradise, in hell or in the afterlife. Even some of the most famous moments in music history are due to the imagination of the realms that are beyond this world.

In the works by Francesco Filidei, music and death are always interconnected: 'Man has found three instruments to explore life: philosophy, religion, and art. To me, music is the most effective because it works with time, and we perceive life through time.'

The composer Michael Beil devoted himself to cross-media questions very early, and his composition "Black Jack" plays with the relationship between sound and picture, playback and action, while giving special emphasis to the play with silence and repetitions. The piece culminates in a powerful march in which virtuality and reality are antagonistic.

For his unfinished song-cycle "In der Matratzengruft", Mauricio Kagel compiled a text from Heinrich Heine's last poems. In the fifteen parts of the composition, Kagel reassembles the soloistic chamber ensemble again and again and blends his own colours for each of the musical sections: 'It is a musical parable of Heine's fragmented existence', writes Kagel, 'where fragments of fragments succeed one another intermittently, sometimes even simultaneously, and where the knot between the real reason for suffering and the eternal question of "Why" cannot be untied.'

The demanding artwork of the CD series is created with pictures by the painter Gerhard Richter, commenting on the thematic concentration of the programmes in an artistic manner. Richter, one of the most important living artists, has been a member of the board of trustees of the Ensemble Musikfabrik since 2009.

The interpretations of all works are the first recordings worldwide.

A production of the Westdeutscher Rundfunk Köln, licensed by WDR mediagroup GmbH