Max Black

Most music the world ever hears nowadays is produced by and performed through machines, and the next great composer will be a master of them. Perhaps Heiner Goebbels is the one. He is currently engaging London's ears with a wide and witty variety of immediate and sampled sounds in his latest piece, Max Black.

The screech of an un-oiled hinge dances with the low reverberations of a very long violin string stretched between the wings. The resonant plop of a finger extracted from a test tube contrasts with the strange music of a bowed spoke in a bicycle wheel. Everything is amplified. Rhythm and repetition govern the flow. It is sculpted sound which is music.

The monologuist is the actor André Wilms who speaks in French throughout. A concise translation appears on the rear wall. We hear the burble of language, but see text. We also see a lot of naked flame as Goebbels has enlisted the pyrotechnist Pierre-Alain Hubert whose skill is in subtlety.

"Compare the enigma of the flame with that of thought," begs Wilms. His script is a choice collection of philosophical observations by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Paul Valery and the Russian logician Max Black himself. He generates perfect smoke rings and worries about the the definition of a barber. Is he still one when he shaves himself?

It ended too soon. In fact, I had to check that people were not getting up for the interval. There is none in this original, beautiful and short show.

Max Black