Name: X-Rayed
Start: 2024-05-05T18:00:00
Location: Theater Bonn Opera House

Christoph Altstaedt

Ian Dearden

Beethoven Orchester Bonn

Imagine you could listen to Ludwig van Beethoven composing! Crawl into his cerebral convolutions. That’s exactly what Gerard McBurney’s radio play with live orchestra X-Rayed is about. Matthias Brandt has lent his voice to Ludwig van Beethoven: He wonders where to buy his coffee beans and when the piano tuner is coming. He muses about underwear and double counterpoint. And we are immersed in the acoustic world of Biedermeier Vienna with its coffee houses, its hackney carriages and Beethoven’s scratchy quill. An immersive sound experience in which we witness the genesis of the intoxicating Seventh Symphony: This was conceived by Gerard McBurney, the English composer, radio producer, educator and programme maker who has worked for and with the world’s most distinguished conductors since the 1990s: Simon Rattle, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and, above all and for a long time: Pierre Boulez. For him, McBurney devised more than 70 »Children’s Concerts for Adults« over a ten-year period in Chicago. Multimedia concert experiences that opened the ears of the audience and left them speechless: Enchanted and enraptured by what they discovered new in seemingly familiar music. The Beethoven Orchestra Bonn enters into a live dialogue with the surround sound experience of McBurney’s radio play – an absolutely novel listening experience.