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March 5, 2024, New York: The World according to Kafka

Andy Warhol
Franz Kafka, 1980 from Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century portfolio
screenprint on Lenox Museum board, 40 x 32 inches
courtesy of Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York
© 2024 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York
 

Tuesday, March 5, 2024 at 7.00 pm
Bohemian National Hall
321 East 73rd Street | New York, NY 10021 | USA

 

The World According to Kafka
A Musical-Literary Collage
commemorating the 100th anniversary of Franz Kafka’s death

Part dramatic reading, part concert, the musical-literary collage The World According to Kafka juxtaposes texts from Franz Kafka’s short stories, diaries, letters, and aphorisms with compositions by his Czech contemporaries as well as Kafka-settings by German contemporary composer Stefan Heucke.

In his stories, Franz Kafka (1883 – 1924) leaves behind the realm of the possible and probable world in order to better understand the real world. His protagonists often are helplessly confronted by anonymous powers; they are imprisoned in a maze without exit. Fear and failure are dominant topics. In vain his protagonists look for a way out. A master of the absurd, Kafka describes the most fantastic events with a clarity and precision, that leads the reader to the limits of thinking. In Kafka’s work the great upheaval of the 20th century is expressed almost like a vision. Like no other author, Kafka describes the emotional framework and living conditions of modernity.

Baritone Peter Kendall Clark will narrate Franz Kafka’s texts. Soprano Jeannie Im will present some of Kafka’s favourite melodies by Friedrich Silcher and Carl Loewe, as well as songs by Czech composers Max Brod, and Adolf Schreiber, and twelve-tone-settings of Kafka’s prose by Stefan Heucke. Elysium’s Music Director Dan Franklin Smith complements the musical selections with piano solo pieces by Antonin Dvořák, Joseph Bohuslav Foerster, Pavel Haas, Leos Janácek, Bohuslav Martinu, Viteslav Novák, Erwin Schulhoff, Bedřich Smetana, Josef Suk and Viktor Ullmann.

 

Concept & Introduction: Michael Lahr von Leïtis, Artistic Director of Elysium – between two continents.

Presented by the Czech Consulate General New York in cooperation with Elysium – between two continents and The Lahr von Leitis Academy & Archive

Admission: Free

Reservations are required and can be made here

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