Hallgrímsson World Premiere
15th December 2003
sketch by Daniela Scheidl
Hallgrímsson first set texts by Kharms in Mini-Stories (1997/99) for narrator, soprano and small ensemble. Stephen Johnson wrote in The Scotsman (April 1999): “The texts are by the Russian absurdist poet Daniil Kharms, one of the legions of talented writers who “disappeared” in Stalin’s Russia. The Icelandic composer Haflidi Hallgrímsson links them with 12 instrumental miniatures, by turns truculent and surreal. The result is MINI-STORIES – a clever, entertaining, but ultimately unsettling piece of music-theatre. Kharms and Hallgrímsson make you laugh one minute, then feel vaguely guilty for laughing the next.”
Now Hallgrimsson has now returned to texts by Kharms for this new work. It is a co-commission between Theater Lübeck and NetzZeit, Vienna and will be directed by NetzZeit’s artistic director Michael Scheidl and conducted by Frank Maximilian Hube, Theater Lübeck. After nine performances in Lübeck which will run up to June 2004, the production will be seen in Vienna in spring 2005.
