Ørets teater* (Theatre of the Ear)

Ørets teater* (Theatre of the Ear) by and with The Norwegian Radio Orchestra (KORK): What happens if we make a few changes in the usual relationship we have to an orchestra? Does anything happen to our listening, can we get a new entrance to the mystery of listening through musical staging?

The music has no images, no words nor language. It is abstract and it enters via the ear. Despite of this music is as often presented as something visual or textual. We have gotten into the habit of expecting music not just to be experienced through the ear, but as much through the eyes. But music is not image and it is not text, it is something else. In a concert with an orchestra one should be able to experience this "else", but also here we enter with habits which are as decisive for the experience as the ear. The architecture of the orchestra, the ritual movement in and out of the podium, the mandatory applause after every work, the dark clothes. All the costumes the orchestra surrounds itself with, have us, the audience, picking up on habits, including in our listening.

Central in Ørets teater* (Theatre of the Ear) with The Norwegian Radio Orchestra (KORK) stood the Italian composer Luigi Nono’s work No hay caminos hay que caminar. Nono was intensely focused on the experience we get through listening is something else and qualitatively different than other sensory impressions. His wish to surpass dogmas and habitual attitudes to explore the listening as an active act stood as a headline for the performance of his work.

Program for Ørets teater with The Norwegian Radio Orchestra:
Henrik Hellstenius: Like objects in a dark room (2007)
Claude Vivier: Lonely Child (1980)
Salvatore Sciarrino: Autoritratto nella notte (1982)
Luigi Nono: No hay caminos hay que caminar....Andrej Tarkovskij (1987)

Source: The Open Theatre (Det Åpne Teater), detapneteater.no, 27.10.2010, http://www.detapneteater.no/pub/daat/forestillinger/?aid=427&cid=17&sac=all&viewall=1#daat