In the new work ''Shlimazl'' by the Swiss composer Michael Wertmüller, symphony orchestra and big band merge into a virtuoso, polymetric organism that not only transcends styles, but also a perceived linearity of time. In doing so, he explicitly takes up the rich tradition of the big band, and revitalises it within the symphonic context under new auspices and allows it to take off. All the soloists act like a picture within a picture within the big band, which oscillates between musical nucleus, place of concentration and utopian space of freedom.

Wertmüller illuminates the ambiguity of the Yiddish title Shlimazl (engl.: mess) with the structuring phrases Mazely Shlimazl (engl.: happiness and mess). The stylistic carombole and the chaos of polyphony without uniformity harbour not only the overwhelming effect of apparent incompatibility but also the happiness of new possibilities for cooperation: from the power of contradiction and friction towards something that can neither be planned nor imagined. A model that creates the vision of a constructive way out in times of increasing incompatibility and hardening in the world.

''Shlimazl'' by Michael Wertmüller was a commissioned composition by Basel Sinfonietta and Ruhrtriennale.


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