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| 1996 |
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“melken” [milking]
a visual audio-play
The milking machine: as alien as a dairy maid doing piecework would seem in the world of traditional farming, so stands the production of “melken” [milking] in traditional Swiss-confederate origin fantasies. A contemporary, aerophonical Alp saga [Director and artistic accompaniment: Daniel Prieto].
“…The two Swiss, Christian Zehnder and Balthasar Streiff, are the best thing that has climbed across the Alps and onto our stages: … a bizarre scenario of sounds and images, intelligent and ironic, as richly effectual as an opera, as sad as Piazzolla’s tango, and as full of secrets as a Swiss cheese…”
[Süddeutsche Zeitung]
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| 1997 |
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«schnee» [neige]
tableau scénique sonore
Not a story per se, but rather the contemplation of a state; a dramatic meditation. “schnee” is a musical expedition that invites stories to unfold in the heads of its audience [Director and artistic accompaniment: Daniel Prieto].
“… Let us start with the best, with the “cherry on top” […] The two gifted musicians send us, totally relaxed, on an emotional journey over bright peaks of lust, dim plateaus of meditation, sparkling cliffs of comedy and irony, down to the dark abysses of delusions, fear and pain. A most clever musical chamber performance. Charming, bewitching, pure, beautiful and true. Amazing…”
[Die Welt]
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| 1998 |
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«troilus und cressida»
“stimmhorn” was commissioned by the Salzburger Festspiele to develop live stage music to William Shakespeare’s play “troilus and cressida”. A co-production of the Salzburger Festspiele with the Theater Basel [Director: Stefan Bachmann].
“The duo stimmhorn got the most applause. They drive forward Shakespeare’s anti-war satire-poetry with an archaic cacophony of voice and sound, as if Jericho’s trombones had been united with Neanderthalian primal screams, skillfully integrated into Bachmann’s nervous and stark Shakespeare-contemporanization.”
[Münchner-Abendzeitung]
“Superb, finally, was the implementation of music by Balthasar Streiff, and Christian Zehnder, whose appearances as Cassandra also get under one’s skin.”
[Wiener Zeitung]
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| 1999 |
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«verlust der stille»
[loss of silence]
This wordless musical-theatrical experiment was developed as a collective creation together with the drama department of the Theater Basel [Director: Christian Zehnder; dramaturgy: Matthias Günther; music: “stimmhorn”].
“…This one-hour long performance is of an unbelievable precision: every note seems to be accidental but is, in fact, tuned to the others in an extremely fine and exact manner. With a dreamlike naturalness they demonstrate how superb even the most ordinary, every-day noise can be: the crackling of fire, the tingling of a pinball machine, train and street noise. In its entirety, “verlust der stille” [loss of silence] is like a breath of autumn air; a wind chime, made of metallic and wooden sound bars, which conveys utter warmth and peace of mind”.
[Süddeutsche Zeitung] |
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| 2003 |
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«faust II»
In their third production with the Theater Basel, “stimmhorn”, together with the electro-engineer “kold”, composed the music for Goethe’s «faust II». Under Matthias Günther’s direction, an equally radical and unconventional production of this cult play was created.
“When you look at your watch for the first time, the two-hour long evening, without a break, is almost over. And one is astonished at the concentration with which one has been able to follow an otherwise not particularly spectacular evening. The main reason for this having been kept quiet up until now: the phenomenal music of “stimmhorn” & “kold electronics”. They are the sound-magicians who already in the production of Stefan Bachmann’s “troilus & cressida” were the main event. They begin cautiously and work their way up to a strangely sensuous intoxication that lends the evening a profound quality, with double alpenhorn, synthesizer and overtone singing, tongue flute, wippcordion, tuba – which goes beyond human expression.”
[Neue Zürcher Zeitung] |
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| 2003 |
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«inland»
The music film about ”stimmhorn” was produced in a collaboration with the film-maker Pierre-Ives Borgeaud and the Swiss television SF DRS. The result is a CD of the same name and a new concert performance [Director: Antonia Brix].
…”stimmhorn” are a piece of luck, two musician-performers with a deep understanding of and for one another, who have congenially developed something unseen and unheard of until now: extraterrestrial chansons for evenings at home with strangers.
[Frankfurter Allgemeine]
“… Only with “inland” has stimmhorn coagulated into an ubiquitously valid, universal “world formula”…”
[Basellandschaftliche Zeitung] |
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| 2004 |
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«igloo»
stimmhorn & kold electronics
An igloo is an archetypal abode of protection against cold and blizzard. And it is a place of retreat to those who are lost. With the distant panorama of the Alps, in the midst of an industrial zone, the three musicians have built their very own igloo, where, open to the unpredictability of musical cross-border migrations, their new album was made.
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| 2004 |
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«stimmhorn»
chamber performance
“stimmhorn” is also further on tour as a duo. In their chamber concert, the audiences are witness to the continuing evolution of their work. The integration of new pieces from “igloo” gives new impulses and moves the previous to another place. Here, they come very close to their audience: the two performers with their polyphonic worlds of voice and sound.
“Utterly sincere, technically brillant and completely bonkers… You really have to experience them live! If what they do is closer to art than music, then think of them as site-specific living sculpture – and a lot more fun than Gilbert and George.”
[The Guardian |
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