Walden

“Walden consists of a series of musical sketches inspired by the 1854 novel of the same name by Henry David Thoreau”, thus reads the short description of this project by Heiner Goebbels. But those familiar with the oeuvre of the German trans-media conceptualist and composer know that with Goebbels it’s never quite that simple. In his 1998 creation Walden, composed for expanded orchestra with speaker, Goebbels incorporates a wide-flung stream of inspirations and approaches, spanning excerpts from Thoreau’s “Walden”, soundscape-design in the spirit of audio plays, arsenals of outlandish instruments and sonic layouts as much at home in the avantgarde as they borrow from popular music, all brought to life with Peter Eötvös conducting and Bob Rutman – a main figure in this project – in the role of the narrator. Rutman can also be heard in a more declamatory role, exclaiming with vehemence, sometimes singing in the khoomei technique, then becoming part of the orchestra playing the steel cello and bow chimes, both instruments of his own design.