»Porträtkonzert: Eloain Lovis Hübner« | Musik 21 Festival

For many years, extensive experimentation and improvisation on instruments, as well as the development of radically different playing techniques and structural modifications, have been integral parts of Eloain Lovis Hübner’s compositional practice. These are reflected in ensemble compositions as well as in composer-performer works, in which Hübner plays instruments that she “cannot play.” However, this interest in exploring the structural material and its physical properties is most clearly expressed in a series of solo pieces composed since 2020.

A solo concerto for four musicians

The “Four Short Pieces for Extended Trombone,” composed in 2022 during a residency at the Lower Saxony Artists’ Residency Künstlerhof Schreyahn, premiered that same year at the Musik 21 Festival, Since then, they have been released on CD by the NEOS label, taken up by several trombonists, and refined and given individual shape through their creative ingenuity. “E 56.9” for cello and “T 5.48” for saxophone continue Hübner’s close collaboration with the Kraków-based ensemble Spółdzielnia Muzyczna and are dedicated to ensemble members Jakub Gucik and Krzysztof Guńka—the perfect “partners in crime” in the experimental exploration of the technical limits of their respective instruments. As a sonic contrast, the tranquil accordion piece “gestalt und zersetzung 1” will be heard for the first time in Germany at the Musik 21 Festival (2026 in Göttingen).

“What kind of times are these?”—The Musik 21 Festival 2026

Silence or screaming? Act, react—but how? Or look away? Caught between power and powerlessness, between a cry and silence, the Musik 21 Festival 2026 unfolds its program and takes up Bertolt Brecht’s question: “What kind of times are these?”—a question that remains as relevant today as ever.

“What kind of times are these?” wrote Bertolt Brecht in 1934 in his poem *To Those Yet to Come*, lamenting that a conversation about trees was almost a crime because it implied silence about so many atrocities. In this way, he responded artistically to the silence surrounding the atrocities of his time, which are likely similar to our own: fascism, militarism, the threat of war and annihilation, and, not least, a hegemonic callousness.