Heiner Goebbels
Surrogate Cities/Junge Deutsche Philharmonie
voices: Jocelyn B. Smith, David Moss
conductor: Peter Rundel
with words by Heiner Mueller, Hugo Hamilton and Paul Auster
"Surrogate Cities" is an attempt to approach the phenomenon of the city from various sides, to tell stories of cities, expose oneself to them, observe them, it is material about metropolises that has accumulated over the course of time. The work was inspired partly by texts, but also by drawings, structures and sounds, the juxtaposition of orchestra and sampler playing a considerable role because of the latter's ability to store sounds and noises ordinarily alien to orchestral sonorities. The associations I have are with a realistic, certainly contradictory, but ultimately positive image of the modern city. My intention was not to produce a close-up but to try and read the city as a text and then to translate something of its mechanics and architecture into music...
When it comes to the power dynamics of the city, the individual is always the more vulnerable party. Art rebels against this overpowering structure by strengthening the subjective element. Music, too, is composed from a highly subjective perspective, for composers usually justify what they write by saying that they "need to get it out of their system". That is only partly true for me. I try to gain a bit more distance. I construct something that confronts the audience and the audience reacts to it, discovering in the music a space they can enter complete with their associations and ideas.
(From a conversation with Heiner Goebbels)
total playing time: 70:10
