Instrumentation: 2 Perc-solo, Str.: 4-4-3-3-1
Publisher: Ms.
Duration: ca. 13′
FP: March 5, 1995, Lübeck (Lübeck Youth Orchestra, Wieland Welzel, Maximilian Marcoll, Perc, Cond.: Roberto Frontini)
Further performances:
Mar 4, 1998, Leipzig (Chamber orchestra of the MDR, Cond.: Peter Hirsch)
Sep 7, 2003, Görlitz (Neue Lausitzer Philharmonie/Eckehard Stier)
Radio broadcast MDR
Introduction:
Danse macabre is a very popular topic in the art of the middle ages and romantic music. In this composition, an atmosphere of fear and anxiety dominates, but also several aspects of motion are explored. The beginning seems like slow motion, almost paralyzed, then apparently compressing and again crumbling, later wildly and aimlessly breaking out. By the repeated use of the opening atmosphere – music at the border to nowhere – a kind of Rondo form emerges (also implying a kind of round dance, as which the ‘dance of death’ is often presented in paintings). The parts in between the ‘Rondo-theme’ seem as if they tried to shake off the palsy of a nightmare.