Lucerne Festival 2012: Karlheinz Stockhausen, Heinz Holliger

On 1 September, ten days after the premiere in Birmingham of the ‘Wednesday’ segment of Stockhausen's Licht cycle, a vocal sextet written in tandem with the final scene received an airing at a matinee concert in Lucerne's Matthauskirche. Composed, like the rest of Mittwoch, in 1997, Menschen, hort (‘Listen, people’) obviously carried special significance for the composer. The a cappella piece can be performed independently of the cycle, and Stockhausen's text is inscribed on the gravestone he designed for himself ten years before his death.