Reinhold Messner & DSO: musical mountain climbing

The Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin & Robin Ticciati present Strauss’s An Alpine Symphony as a guided musical mountain tour with Reinhold Messner.

This new production of “AN ALPINE SYMPHONY’ presents Strauss’s symphonic poem as a musical and philosophical mountain hike with the legendary mountaineer Reinhold Messner.

Existential reports from Messner engage in a cinematic dialogue with concert recordings that were made in a 360-degree arrangement of the impressive large orchestral forces around DSO Music Director Robin Ticciati in Berlin’s Tempodrom.
The film leads us through the Alps, lets the audience pass flowering meadows en route, through thickets and underbrush, over mountain pastures and glaciers to the summit, and finally the descent surrounded by thunderstorms. Juxtaposed with this, Messner provides insights into the physical and psychological borderline experiences of his mountain ascents and speaks about extreme situations, the perception of nature, and his mental state on the night before departure, during the conquest of the peak, during the long, onerous descent and the exhausted, contented return home.

“The dialogue between Messner's words and Strauss' music is something I've never experienced before. When Messner speaks about climbing a mountain you can do nothing but listen. I have never met anyone who speaks with such authority and sensitivity about their specialism”, Frederic Wake-Walker, director & concept.

With “AN ALPINE SYMPHONY” the DSO & Robin Ticciati are continuing their series of extraordinary film productions (“IN EXILE – OF GODS AND MEN: A CONCERT FILM TRILOGY” & “STRUGGLE WITH THE DEVIL”).

Original title Eine Alpensinfonie – A film by the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin
Genre Orchestral Music, Entertainment
Recording location Tempodrom, Berlin
Recording date March 2021
Duration 45 mins / 57 mins
Production Company Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin in coproduction with EuroArts & rbb Kultur
Director Frederic Wake-Walker
TV Director Andreas Morell
Distribution TV EuroArts Music
English title of music work Richard Strauss: An Alpine Symphony (Eine Alpensinfonie), Op. 64
Conductor Robin Ticciati
Orchestra / Band Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin
Main Actor Reinhold Messner