Memento Malum

At the age of 68, the composer Paul-Heinz Dittrich, born in 1930 in the Erzgebirge, who studied with Rudolf Wagner-Régeny in the late 1950s and later taught and worked in Berlin, at the Sorbonne and at IRCAM, completed a work of extraordinary complexity.

Shortly after Dittrich's death, the Todesfuge for 32 voices will finally be premiered in this concert. The occasion for this premiere is another double anniversary, which had to be cancelled last year due to a pandemic and is now being made up for: Paul Celan's 100th birthday and the 50th anniversary of his death. His famous death fugue is understood as part of European memory. And Dittrich's œuvre is strongly related to literature: In particular, the poems of Samuel Beckett and Paul Celan have repeatedly become the basis of his works.

With a poem recitation by Ahmad Mesgarha (actor Staatsschauspiel Dresden).

Paul-Heinz Dittrich (1930 - 2020)
MEMENTO MORI. Death Fugue after Paul Celan

The text is an original contribution by Jens Schubbe on the occasion of the premiere of Todesfuge by Paul-Heinz Dittrich.
(Use of parts of the text or reprinting only with permission of the author)