On September 3, 2005, the banks of the River Danube in Linz saw the staging of “an impertinent falsification of history“, as the Süddeutsche Zeitung put it: the open air play “division at the river” (“teilung am fluss”) which was produced by an artists’ network called lawine torrèn (Director: Hubert Lepka).
The play formed part of that year’s “Linzer Klangwolke”, an annual sequence of performances that opens the Bruckner Festival in Linz. 2005, however, was also the year of a number of major historical anniversaries, which were celebrated by the Austrian government with a wide-ranging programme of commemorative events: 60 years of the Second Austrian Republic, the 50 th anniversary of the State Treaty (Staatsvertrag) and finally, 10 years of membership in the EU.
It was therefore entirely to be expected that historical references would find their way into the “Klangwolke” of 2005.
