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Einstein on the beach

Collegium Vocale Gent, Suzanne Vega, Ictus

Catalogue number: 337
Number of CDs: 2
Format: Digital

PRESENTATION AND CONCEPT

The concert version of Einstein on the Beach by Philip Glass is the result of a collaboration between Suzanne Vega, Ictus, Collegium Vocale Gent and visual artist Germaine Kruip. The focus is on the purely musical approach to the integral 200-minute score of the legendary Glass-Wilson opera. Sophisticated sound design and a site-specific approach emphasize the exceptional instrumental and vocal virtuosity and the crystal-clear structure.

The extreme length of the performance and the compelling narrative style of Suzanne Vega, who delivers all spoken texts, immerse the spectators in a sound bath that takes them back to the refreshing radicality of early minimalism. The doors of the concert hall remain open, giving the public the opportunity to walk in and out of the hall. The separation between stage and audience becomes blurred through the intervention of Germaine Kruip, who reimagines the space as an installation.

This performance is not a revival of the total spectacle with mythical proportions that emerged from the combined forces of Philip Glass, Bob Wilson and Lucinda Childs in 1976. This version of Einstein on the Beach, more than forty years later, puts the musical gesture itself in the foreground. The dramatic action consists of the physical and mental challenge to which the musicians and choir members of this 200-minute trip are subjected. They often play at a breakneck pace, with the required surgical precision, gesticulate, share the space with and between their interventions with the audience, change position, adjust the lighting... Here musicians are at work.

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