Event

Reinhold Friedrich | trumpet

Janice Dixon | Vocal

SCHOLA HEIDELBERG | Choir

Reinhold Friedrich, the soloist with MODERN TIMES 4, is captivated by the trumpet – at least that’s how he presents himself on his website. It shows him and his instrument, both tightly bound by a thick hemp rope. But of course, as a professor at the Karlsruhe University of Music, he is also a captivating trumpeter – exactly the kind needed for a performance of Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s gripping trumpet concerto from 1954. For the composition is an unambiguous statement against racism. It is based on the gospel song "Nobody Knows the Trouble I See" and sounds like a desperate struggle between the trumpet, which plays with jazz-like freedom, and the menacing orchestra, which threatens to crush it. Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia, composed during the turbulent years at the end of the 1960s, is as politically explosive as it is relevant today. It was a time when European civil society was reinventing itself, when people dared to demand more democracy and more worker participation in factories and universities alike. The Sinfonia reflects this in two ways. On the one hand, it looks back on the 20th century – with all its ruptures and catastrophes—through appropriate quotations (Mahler, Schoenberg, Debussy). On the other hand, it connects to current events by adopting a documentary approach and incorporating sampled soundscapes of student unrest