Nothing to Declare | Haapanen / Lelele | Wennäkoski

MaerzMusik presents the German premiere of two new multimedia works by the young Finish composers Lotta Wennäkoski and Perttu Haapanen in the Sophiensaele. The MONODRAMAS will be premiered at Musica nova Helsinki in February 2011 by two outstanding soloists and the Plus-Ensemble.

Lelele by Lotta Wennäkoski deals with the issue of the sexual slavery of tens of thousands of women and children in West Europe on the basis of firsthand accounts. With the soprano, Pia Freund, accompanied by clarinet, cello and accordion, Lotta Wennäkoski has accomplished a serious poetic work, the photographical and cinematic image elements of which were created by the artist Elina Brotherus.

Nothing to Declare by Perttu Haapanen was developed in collaboration with the choreographer Tomi Paasonen. Together they created a character who operates even in “nothingness”, who ritually goes about their daily office life, disciplined and unperturbed, even after the clocks have stopped. Everything is empty, but the “nothingness” is organised. The real world becomes the illusory world, in which the protagonist loses himself. Nothing to Declare with the baritone Nicholas Isherwood lays bare the lunacy of bureaucracy and of the “lifeless” world of work in a choreographical interplay between sound, light and movement.