Sounds, tones, noises, voices and texts converge in one of Heiner Goebbels’ most extraordinary acoustic creations. Is it a composition, environment, installation or sound sculpture on a grand scale? Its creator once described it as a composition for five pianos with no pianists, a play with no actors, a performance without performers, "one might say a no-man show".

Yet it is teeming with sound sources – ranging from Bach to chants of natives of New Guinea and to Greek folk song, and overlapping voices of, amongst many others, Claude Lévi-Strauss, William Burroughs and Malcolm X. The work was inspired by the work of 19th century Austrian Romantic writer Adalbert Stifter, who meticulously documented the signs and sounds of nature.

Wolfgang Sandner states in his liner notes: “Stifters Dinge is the work of an extraordinary human imagination. It is a piece that will have made a deep impression on anyone who saw it in the theatre, and that may have still more effect on anyone who now just hears what was originally a multimedia construction, since the wondrous stage action, apparently unfolding without human intervention, does not fundamentally need visualizing. One can almost take hold of the sound events themselves as physical presences. Simply by listening one can move around the work and experience it from all sides, as if it were a sculpture by Michelangelo or Rodin. Is there such a thing as three-dimensional music? Could there be? If so, Stifters Dinge would belong in this utopian category.”

Heiner Goebbels, who celebrates his 60th birthday in August 2012, has been named winner of the 2012 International Ibsen Award. His work has regularly been seen in Britain, including Stifters Dinge which Artangel mounted in London in 2008.

Track Listing:
1. The Fog
2. The Salt
3. The Water
4. The Wind
5. The Trees
6. The Thing
7. The Rain
8. The Thunder
9. El Sonido
10. The Storm
11. The Coast
12. Exhibition of Objects

Personnel:
- Heiner Goebbels (conception, music and direction)
- Klaus Grünberg (set design, light and video),
- Hubert Machnik (musical collaboration, programming)
- Willi Bopp (sound design)