NICOLAS ALTSTAEDT UND DAS MKO

In totalitarian states, the night forms a protected space for the ‘I’, even in a subversive sense. On the other hand, arrests by the secret police preferably take place at night. During the Stalinist ‘Great Terror’ in the mid-1930s, Shostakovich also always had a packed suitcase ready in case there was a knock at the door at night. From then on, he never let go of this vigil. It is also present in the Cello Concerto No. 1 from 1959. At the end of the ‘Moderato’, the fragile harmonics of the solo cello and celesta intonate an otherworldly lullaby that leads into an extended ‘Cadenza’: a nocturnal soliloquy like in Dutilleux’s ‘Trois Strophes sur le nom de Sacher’ for solo cello. As a soloist and conductor, Nicolas Altstaedt wrests new dimensions from the ‘I’ in the collective. Birtwistle’s ‘Cortege’ from 2007 also works with this beforehand. No conductor leads the 14 musicians, and 10 of them take on soloistic-performative parts: a ‘cere- mony’, according to Birtwistle. In the darkened C minor of Schubert’s ‘Tragischer’, on the other hand, the light always shimmers with hope.