"Hymnen an die Nacht"

Texts and music on darkness - nocturnal poetry and prose

From Novalis and Heine to Strindberg and Kaleko: romantic dreamscapes, urban poetry, paranoia, insomnia, surreal monologues and dream interpretation - together they paint a portrait of night as a space for fantasy and nightmare, as a counterworld to the daily grind, as a projection of fear, happiness, death and love. Bach's Goldberg Variations, composed some three hundred years ago to entertain during sleepless nights, enter into close dialogue with these texts: sometimes as a musical twin, sometimes in contradiction, sometimes improvisatorially transformed.

At the piano is Markus Becker, who studied with Karl-Heinz Kämmerling and received formative impulses from Alfred Brendel. As a soloist and chamber musician he works with leading orchestras; his Reger recordings have won multiple awards. He is a professor at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hannover.

The literary part is taken by Devid Striesow, a former ensemble member at the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus and a regular guest at the Hamburger Schauspielhaus. He became widely known through films such as "Das Leben der Anderen", "Yella" and "Die Fälscher", and is also in demand as a reader at literary events and for audiobook recordings. He is currently appearing in "Ödipus" and the ancient-world cycle "Anthropolis"; the sequel "Fremde Sonne" follows in autumn.