wanderlust

Guitars and guitar duos are increasingly to be met with in contemporary music festivals and Wilhelm Bruck & Theodor Ross have built up a reputation together in Germany, with premieres of Zimmermann, Kagel & Lachenmann to their credit. Although there were few normal sounds to be heard in their music theatrical performance, there was no reason to doubt their skills. Both works were capable of various possible interpretations.

Kurze Schnitte (41 pieces for two guitarists) by Uwe Kremp (b.1964)[...] For the second half of Wilhelm Bruck & Theodor Ross's event, Thomas Witzman (b.1958) supplied Wanderlust (the pleasure of rambling) a piece of musical theatre of mesmerising intensity. To this writer it became quickly apparent that the title is ironical and not a reference to an idyllic country walk. Four guitars lie on the floor spotlit in semi-darkness, another two dangle either side of the row like hanged creatures.

Sinister presagings are reinforced with guitars suddenly, unceremoniously and noisily dropping down from scaffolding high above the auditorium, where we eventually locate the source of some grating sounds. Heavy booted players went their ways precariously along the walkways in the flies, clanking their instruments which then get dragged down the stairs through the audience. Each movement and surface contact is earily amplified by floor microphones.

The wanderers at first move around in a seemingly aimless fashion, strumming their instruments and every now and then taking a swipe at the 'victims' to send them spinning around. A confrontational situation develops over the occupation of a wooden stool. Aggressive attacking noises climax in a drawn sword duel, with guitars clashing head on, grating each others' strings uncomfortably. The fight over territory ends with the winner expropriating the other player's guitar.

The allusions to a war situation are reinforced, with the guitars at one point becoming crutches or a false leg for bent-over cripples. A disemboweling scene has the players drawing an enormous length of wire from the belly of a 'victim' instrument. They then send frenzied shock waves along this wire, stretched across the width of the auditorium, eventually attacking the vulnerable guitars lying on the floor.

Those, in turn, try some resistance, attempting to get up, only to crash down 'dead' in the end. Worse was to come, with a mother and child ( one overlarge and one tiny guitar) being shot to pieces with darts till they keeled over. The sense of the monstrosity, vandalism and the destructiveness unleashed with the soundscape and the visual picture which was enacted was utterly harrowing and made one gasp. This is gripping and thought provoking music theatre. A great work.

"Wanderlust" review by Peter and Alexa Woolf, Seen&Heard, London, Feb. 2001