Zhu Wenbo & Zhao Cong, Manfred Werder & Stefan Thut.

‘Concepts hold the world together, whilst contexts are like the enriching singularities of the world.’ (Manfred Werder)

Programme
New works by Zhao Cong, Zhu Wenbo, Manfred Werder, Stefan Thut

Participants
Zhao Cong, Zhu Wenbo, Manfred Werder, Stefan Thut: a wide variety of instruments and objects, voices

It is a deep artistic and aesthetic bond that unites the two duos: Their musical sensibility is spectral; every sound, however small, is realised with deep affection as an event in its own right, whilst at the same time both duos work with performative gestures that completely transcend the boundaries of concert halls and find their highest expression in public spaces. This is the very raison d’être of the quartet: there is no essentialist ideology regarding the sensory surface or the framework of the works, but rather a deep sense of the interrelationship of all that exists. Context here means that the music of both duos never imposes itself dominantly on its immediate surroundings; there is always a situational transparency, or, viewed from another perspective: there is always a certain opacity in the events of their music; they never seek to make the complexity of the real world disappear. The great artistic challenge for the duos ZHAO CONG ZHU WENBO and MANFRED WERDER STEFAN THUT in joining forces to form a quartet, however, lies precisely in their great difference within this deep connection. One might say that the bond is more conceptual, whilst the difference is contextual. Concepts hold the world together, whilst contexts are like the enriching singularities of the world.