Baroque Immersions

A virtual symbiosis of baroque and present

Eight young musicians invite you to a baroque sound bath. The artists bring rarely performed works of the 17th and 18th centuries to life on historical instruments, interpreting composers such as Georg Muffat and Johann Christoph Bach. But that is not all: thanks to a multi-channel loudspeaker system, the ensemble sound is electronically amplified, spatialized, condensed and distorted in real time. Individual instruments emerge, not arbitrarily, but in accordance with the score. In this way an astonishing intensification can be experienced: Eyes close and revel in the dense polyphonic sound of the Baroque. This sound is extended into the present when contemporary composers such as Georg Friedrich Haas and the German-Iranian artist Arash Safaian take up the “in-nomine” motif of the early baroque and interpret it in a modern way. Already in the 16th and 17th centuries, the “In- Nomine” motif, which originally came from a mass by John Taverner, was very popular and was elaborately polyphonically processed by many composers. The contemporary “in-nomine” interpretations run like a red thread through the program and build a bridge to the present day. The highlight of this unusual concert experience is the performance of the text “Transcription of Organ Music” from the pen of the American poet Allen Ginsberg, combined with organ arrangements by Johann Sebastian Bach.

Supported by the Kuratorium KölnMusik e.V. and funded by the Doppelpass Fund of the German Federal Cultural Foundation.

A production of PODIUM Esslingen.

Supported by the Kunststiftung NRW