Per aspera ad astra

Gerald Resch: Con moto (2018)
(film adaptation by Simon Vosecek)
Afamia Al-Dayaa: darkness, unveiled, world premiere
Rebecca Saunders: Stirrings Still II (2008)
Fausto Romitelli: Professor Bad Trip, Lesson I (1998)

Music that oscillates between darkness and light. It sounds out, comes closer, lets the uncertain shimmer through.

Central to Platypus Ensemble’s concert are the new works darkness, unveiled by Afamia Al-Dayaa and Gerald Resch’s Con moto. The two composers also incorporate cinematic and electronic elements. While Resch’s Con moto was “animated” by Simon Vosecek, Afamia Al-Dayaa works with electronics in her piece commissioned by the Imago Dei Festival.

The artificial, the distorted, the filtered are key to the work of Italian composer Fausto Romitelli. Per aspera ad astra. A constant (Sisyphean) task, his music traverses the dark in order to grow out into the light, where the premonition of darkness lurks once more. While Romitelli’s Professor Bad Trip is full of expressivity, Rebecca Saunders’s work Stirrings Still II, a reference to Samuel Beckett, focuses on inner processes that externalise as soundscapes and seize the entire space, as a “frozen state of being” so to speak. To paraphrase Beckett: “To darkness visible to close the eyes and hear if only that.”

Platypus Ensemble
Jaime Wolfson—director
Christina Bauer—sound director

In cooperation with the Loisiarte – Gerald Resch is a composer-in-residence at Loisiarte in 2024 (March 21–24, 2024). Visitors of Imago Dei and/or Loisiarte receive a 25% discount on concerts featuring works by Gerald Resch at the respective other event.

Tickets: www.loisiarte.at

The new work by Afamia Al-Dayaa is a composition commission by the Federal State of Lower Austria.