Südtiroler Kulturinstitut: Goldberg - Varationen

Johann Sebastian Bach's Goldberg Variations are considered a milestone in music history. Yet the composition - according to the controversial story of its origins - was originally intended to fulfil a rather simple purpose: to shorten sleepless nights. Hermann Carl von Keyserlingk, Russian envoy to the Dresden court, is said to have commissioned it from his friend Bach so that the harpsichordist Johann Gottlieb Goldberg could play it for him on sleepless nights. Night after night, Goldberg is said to have selected individual numbers from the compilation and recombined them. The pianist Ragna Schirmer, who has twice been awarded the Bach Prize and the "Echo", has already devoted a lifetime to this unique composition. After the play "Clara" about Clara Schumann, which was shown in 2020, the Puppentheater Halle is now giving a guest performance with another evening in which piano and puppetry complement each other. Christoph Werner discovers the dreams and visions of life par excellence in the musical variations and sketches the patterns of existence between wakefulness and sleep, between day and night. Lars Frank, Ines Heinrich-Frank and Simon Buchegger provide the imaginative puppet show, while Ragna Schirmer interprets the Goldberg Variations live on the piano.