Contemporary Brussels, ancient Rome and ancient Greece; composer Wim Mertens’ Cran aux Oeufs is a musi-fiction tryptic that questions the connections between song, poetry and truth. It combines ensemble work with – for the first time since 2005’s Un Respiro – a solo album for his distinctive piano and voice.
The first part, Charaktersketch, takes Europe and Brussels 2015 as a central theme and refers to the changed position of the West as a bearer of cultural and economic values and power.
What are we, locks, to do? is the second part of the tryptic and Mertens’ 10th solo album for piano and voice. It mixes myth and reality to consider the political and cultural influences in Egyptian Alexandria of the 3rd century BC. The compositions form a constellation to the poet Callimachus, the royal family Ptolemy and Queen Berenice II.
In Dust of Truths, the final part, Mertens refers to the navy Battle of Actium, Greece, 31 BC when the future emperor Augustus defeated the Egyptian warships of Cleopatra. Was this more a civil war dispute within the Roman Empire than a conflict between Rome and Egypt?
The 30 compositions suggest that man is no longer there for music but music is there for man. Cran aux Oeufs seeks out something more true than truth that renders this something untotalisable. Therefore, the concept of truth must be evacuated. Post-Truth. Feitenvrij. So it becomes more concrete, everted. Ratteketak.
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