The world premiere of the piece, dedicated to the memory of Uwe Dierksen, will take place at Klagenfurt Cathedral as part of the Carinthian Summer festival.
Johannes Maria Staud explains: “The term ‘tulpa’, which originates from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, refers in paranormal discourse to a being that begins as a pure figment of the imagination through intense visualisation, before becoming a tangible reality and sensation. (...) The self encounters its own image as an uncanny counterpart; repetition becomes a threat, reflection a questioning of the self. Nothing returns exactly as it was; everything bears a trace of transformation. Written in memoriam for my friend Uwe Dierksen, who died far too young in 2026, the piece gains an additional layer of meaning: memory appears here not as a static commemoration, but as an imaginative act – what is thought takes shape, the past becomes – for a moment – the present. Composed for the wonderful Wolfgang Kogert, the work explores the organ as an instrument situated between body and space, between inner vision and outer resonance. Tulpa/Doppelgänger thus becomes a musical reflection on imagination and identity".
On 6 July, the Kuss Quartet gave the world premiere of a work by Johannes Maria Staud. Cahier des équilibres mouvants, commissioned by the Carinthischer Sommer, the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg and the Wiener Konzerthaus, is a musical reflection on our planet’s fragile ecosystems.
"The starting point was the idea of ecological balance," explains Johannes Maria Staud. "This metaphor – the transformation, the state of flux, the precarious stability of an ecosystem – fascinates me immensely from a compositional point of view. I envisage the string quartet as a complex, resilient system: four closely interconnected parts that can respond to one another sensitively, flexibly and in unexpected ways. Disturbances and shifts are inherent to the nature of this system; equilibrium does not arise as a state of stillness, but as the result of constant adaptation."
