Sounds, syllables, objects, scraps of words, people:
Music theater works by the Swiss composer and linguist Hans Wüthrich (1937-2019) have left a lasting mark on experimental music theater and redefined it.

His compositions are characterized in particular by a new phonetic and pictorial-theatrical language and address the difficulties of communication - for Wüthrich understood music not only as communication, but rather as communication about communication. He plays with different types of language and lets his characters act in sounds and fantasy languages: In Leve, for example, he works out the poetic and whimsical side of (fantasy) language; in Happy Hour (1998) he plays with numerous alienations in language and action. An evening with unusual perspectives on communication processes in a very own (musical) language.

Hans Wüthrich: Excerpts from LEVE (1993)
Hans Wüthrich: Excerpts from HAPPY HOUR (1998)

With: Students from all faculties of the UdK Berlin / Caroline Scholz Ott, Tobias Müller-Kopp, Daniel Ott, direction / Ilona Perger, assistance / Malwine Kurella, Robert Priebs, technical direction
 

The Swiss composer and linguist Hans Wüthrich (1937-2019) left a lasting mark on contemporary experimental music theater with his works, for each of which he invented a new phonetic or visual-theatrical language. Unlike György Ligeti, for example, who in "Aventures" (1963) allows the Dadaist and abstract to emerge in virtuoso, machine-like rapid speech, Hans Wüthrich is particularly interested in the semantics of his newly invented languages or imaginative music-theatrical creations.

While in "Glashaus" (1975), which was already shown at the UdK Berlin shortly before and at the time of the pandemic, the characters act machine-like in firmly established hierarchical structures and their language phonetically illustrates power relations, "LEVE" (1993) illuminates the poetic and more whimsical side of language and fantasy language, while "HAPPY HOUR" (1998) can again be read more socially and politically through various alienations in language and action.