Sommertag

For many years, a woman has been waiting for her husband to return: a long time ago, he drove out to the fjord and disappeared without a trace. One beautiful summer’s day when she is visited by a friend, she begins to recall the last day she saw her husband Asle. In flashbacks, she lives once again through the pain of a relationship marked by speechlessness and tries to fathom his motives for disappearing.
The Munich composer Nikolaus Brass gave the premiere of his first music theatre production in 2014 with »Sommertag«. Brass translates the oppressive atmosphere of the Norwegian dramatist Jon Fosse’s eponymous play into music. For long sections of the text, the music assumes a commentary function or acts as an expression of what is not said. The central theme – the suspension of time – also manifests itself in the flexible structure of the voices, which in many places are independently from the vocal and instrumental ensemble, and are therefore modelled in »proper time«.