Michael’s journey around the Earth

He floats to spherical sounds around the hall, playing-headfirst or lying on his back- breathtaking glissandos, that remind us of Dizzy Gillespie or Miles Davis. The trumpeter Marco Blaauw’s superb performance as the main actor in Karl-Heinz Stockhausen’s „Michael’s journey around the world“, is not the only convincing aspect of this Monday evening in Vienna. The second act of „Donnerstag“ (Thursday), from Stockhausen’s monumental work „Licht“ (Light), took place during the Wiener Festwochen 2008 and was enthusiastically received by the Première audience in the Jugendstiltheater in Vienna (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) The performance in Vienna was not only convincing because of its delicateness, but also by its high musical quality. The Ensemble Musikfabrik under Peter Rundel played engagingly and very competently. It is well known that Marco Blaauw is a superb musician. It is very pleasing to discover that Nicola Jürgensen is not only a seductive, attractive angelic Eva, but also an excellent Bassett horn player.
Wien (dpa)

The trumpeter becomes literally a skystormer in an astronaut costume. He stands in an open capsule that is connected to beams that are twisted and turned and launched or catapulted through the desolate room. The trumpeter Marco Blaauw plays his instrument as brilliantly as Nicola Jürgensen her velvet sounding Bassett horn, and Carl Rosman and Fie Schouten their clarinets. The „set“ is hardly graspable; everything is in the music of the sounds and their transportation.
Stockhausen’s sound fantasy and strategy, which is brilliantly implemented in the whole cycle by the development of a super formula, is fascinating even in its most complex denseness by its primal energy and his musical hindsight. The aural and visual magic are inseparable.
Süddeutsche Zeitung

Michael, the central figure, is a trumpeter. Marco Blaauw performs his part technically and from the acting point of view virtuosically, despite the breakneck positions he is required to fulfil. Michael encounters an instrumental equivalent with Eva (Nicola Jürgensen), who starts off with farting tones on the Bassett Horn, but finally shares with him an elaborate erotic encounter in astral regions.
The clarinet playing pair of parody swallows (Carl Rosman und Fie Schouten) die prior to that on the cross. The production is held together by three formations of instrumentalists from the „Musikfabrik“, who play with apodictic precision under the skilful conductor Peter Rundel. Stockhausen without contradiction.
Der Standard