“To Love or to Die” – Preludes and Nocturnes of a Relationship

About the event

A collage by Vera Botterbusch with music by Fryderyk Chopin and letters by George Sand. Vera Botterbusch: presentation and reading. Laura Konjetzky: piano.

Fryderyk Chopin (1810–1849) enchanted the Paris salons with piano music in which feeling, elegance and esprit merge. George Sand (1804–1876) and Fryderyk Chopin met in 1837 and set off together for Mallorca in 1838. In 1847 they parted again.

Personally, literarily and musically their encounter culminates in the Préludes Chopin composed in Mallorca (the Charterhouse of Valldemossa) and in the Nocturnes and Valses written later in Nohant (Berry), George Sand's family home – as well as in the writer's letters and her “Histoire de ma vie”.

What remains are two lives that first run side by side, then flow together and finally, painfully, drift apart.

Vera Botterbusch is a versatile artist who has made a name for herself in various fields – theatre, film, photography, exhibitions and publications. Literary-musical collages are among her favourite formats.

Laura Konjetzky studied piano at the Mozarteum University Salzburg and at the Berlin University of the Arts, followed by studies in free improvisation at the Basel Academy of Music. Her work as a performer and composer has been honoured with numerous prizes, and scholarships have taken her to Bamberg, Paris and Virginia (USA). As a composer she is particularly interested in new sounds and in expanding piano playing with new elements. Various German theatres have commissioned her to compose dance and theatre music.

Biographies