Constructie & Stalwarmte

Artist-led space W139 is hosting an extraordinary concert programme on 21 May. As part of the farewell exhibition of director Gijs Frieling, who conceived the idea to paint the walls of W139 with scenes, images and characters from Thomas Mann’s novel Doctor Faustus, the programme ‘Constructie & Stalwarmte’ explores the musical symbolism of the novel.

Mann’s Doctor Faustus, a novel about the life of fictional composer Adrian Levenkühn, tells of how High German 19th century bourgeois culture descended into a totalitarian mass state. The book was inspired, among many other things, by a collective of artists one of the most prominent of whom was composer Arnold Schonberg. The descriptions of the musical passages in this culturally complex book are almost pathological in their attention to detail but nonetheless compelling. Music, language and art are not luxuries but the essentials of life and the definition of what it is to be human. With this, in all its inaccessibility, Doctor Faustus is an emotional treatise for a philosophy of life that recoils from the mass and, because of that, still resonates powerfully today.

Within the walls of the from top-to-toe painted space of W139 music, text and reflection set the scene for a rare combination of music, literature and painting.

The evening will be presented by Dick Tuinder, artist participating in the exhibition and publicist for De Groene Amsterdammer among other things. Table guests include Gijs Frieling, artist and initiator of the exhibition and Elmer Schönberger, writer, composer and musicologist and expert on the music in Doctor Faustus.

With musical performances from the sensitive baritone and winner of the Nederlandse Muziekprijs Henk Neven and virtuoso pianist Daria van den Bercken; the Belgian Goeyvaerts String Trio, specialists in 20th and 21st century music; the talented young Greek pianist/composer Ermis Theodorakis, and the tremendously versatile saxophonist/clarinettist David Kweksilber and bassist Raoul van der Weide.

With work by Schubert, Beethoven, Schönberg, Theodorakis and others.

For more on the Doctor Faustus exhibition, please see the special issue of De Groene Amsterdammer (in Dutch only)

http://www.groene.nl/commentaar/2010-04-09/speciale-uitgave-doktor-faustus

Entrance: 5 Euro

Please make a reservation at: info@w139.nl

indicating: Constructie & Stalwarmte

This programme is made possible thanks to the support of the Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst.

Pianoverhuur Amsterdam

Challange Records