A staged recital
Dramaturgy and concept
World première October 2015
at Bayer Kulturhaus (Leverkusen)
Further performances: International Music Festival Heidelberger Frühling (Heidelberg), Muziekcentrum De Bijloke (Gent), Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg
Stage director, set and costume design, concept: Juan Kruz Diaz de Garaio Esnaola
Soprano: Robin Johannsen/Mirella Hagen
Lute: Magnus Andersson
Dance: Luc Dunberry/Roberto Di Camillo; Joel Suárez Gómez
s t i l l is structured as a recital of lute songs around John Dowlands song Time stands still. The 12 pieces have in common their subject: TIME. Passing time vs. suspended time,
aging and death, memory and nostalgia, anticipation and expectations for what is to come,
the inexorability of Time’s perpetuum mobile, man’s vulnerability to it.
The songs reflect the variety of European lute song during the Renaissance and Early Baroque period. They are pieces which could have been collected by a musician on a journey to England, Spain, Italy and France at the turn from the 16th to the 17th century – in the style of song collections popular at the time like Robert Dowland’s A musical banquet or Jehan Chardavoine’s Les plus belles et excellentes chansons en forme de voix de ville.
The songs have been ordered as when deciding the program for a recital, building a musical journey that is coherent but varied, conceptually strong and clear but still supple and with a flow.
The repertoire spans from Juan del Encina (Spain, 1468 – 1529), Alonso Mudarra (Spain, ca. 1508 – 1580), Jehan Chardavoine (France, ca. 1537 – 1580), Pierre Guédron (France, ca. 1570 – 1620) to John Dowland (England, 1563 – 1626) and Girolamo Frescobaldi (Italy, 1583-1643) and Tarquino Merula (Italy, 1594/95 – 1665).
Four performers, a singer, a lute player and two dancers, dialogue with the music as to witness, bathe and reflect on the words of the poems onto which the songs are set. Each of them is the narrator as much as the emotional landscape for each other.
The evening is thought as a recital in continuous transformation.
A production of Bayer Kultur
