The composer Charlotte Seither and her varied output are the focus of a special concert series and other activities. A portrait in twelve concerts starts in June 2012 as an accompanying project to dOCUMENTA 13 in Kassel.

“Weg mit Abschied” [Path with a parting] is what Eckhard Manz, Kantor at St. Martin’s in Kassel, and initiator of the project, calls this opportunity of encountering Charlotte Seither’s music. The concert series is a portrait in twelve genres, from solo recital to orchestral concert, from a staged evening performance to an Academy project. Always starting from a creative focal point by the composer, music is in dialogue with the arts. Each continuation is a parting: the motto takes as its theme the departure into the open, and an image of the artist which raises the search for the unknown to a principle. So, in a solo piano recital by Markus Bellheim, Franz Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy and Franz Liszt’s Années de pèlerinage are reflected in Seither’s Itinéraire, and in a solo accordion recital by Margit Kern, Seither’s pieces are contrasted with music by Girolamo Frescobaldi from a much earlier period. A performance evening for solo female voice combines the One woman opera with other experimental open formats. Other highlights include ensemble concerts, a Lieder recital, two concerts with vocal ensemble, and finally, a joint project with Kassel institutions.

A composition course at the Musikakademie Kassel brings Charlotte Seither to the city as a teacher, and the results of her work can be heard in a concert. In the space of St. Martin’s Church, a six-week sound installation can be experienced. A songbook with fragments for vocal solo is being created and will be performed as part of a six-part sermon series initiated by Eckhard Manz relating to the theme “Weg mit Abschied” [Path with a parting]. And finally, Charlotte Seither has written an orchestral composition for a school project, Fünf Stücke um den Fluss zu queren” [Five pieces to cross the river], which takes the open, the flexible and the departure as a productive challenge. The premiere of this work, with the orchestra of the Wilhelmsgymnasium Kassel conducted by Christopher Hilmes, takes place on 5 September. Using a very specific orchestral scoring, the composer wants to touch the nerve of her young interpreters, to communicate the attraction of experimental music making, and at the same time to create a piece which continues the sound researches of her latest orchestral works.           

Marie Luise Maintz
(translation: Elizabeth Robinson)
(from [t]akte 1/2012)