Schiller Balladen Rave

Together with his band Die Elektrohand Gottes, Philipp Hochmair transforms Schiller’s famous ballads into an excessive rock concert – fine German lyricism meets electro beats. Hochmair reaches into Schiller’s epic linguistic oeuvre, searches for the throbbing heartbeat of its words and exhausts himself in an intoxicating, spoken word concert. For the celebrated actor, the over 200-year-old verses are an absolute elixir of life; for him, they have nothing to do with compulsory schooling or educated bourgeoisie, but with techno, industrial and ecstasy. Under the rhythmic electro-rock sounds of Die Elektrohand Gottes and Hochmair’s extreme stage performance, the explosive energy of classics like ‘Die Bürgschaft’, ‘Der Handschuh’, ‘Der Ring des Polykrates’, ‘Der Taucher’ or ‘Das Lied von der Glocke’ is revealed. You’ve never heard Schiller like this before!

The high-performance actor Philipp Hochmair is always on fire, always giving his all – theatre can hardly be experienced more intensely. He was a member of the ensemble at the Burgtheater in Vienna and the Thalia Theater in Hamburg for many years and is a regular guest on the major German-language stages. He is known to a wider audience through numerous film and television roles, including as a blind inspector in the Vienna crime series ‘Blind ermittelt’, as a forensic doctor in the series ‘Charité’, as the protagonist of the series ‘Vorstadtweiber’ or most recently as an SS general in the ZDF/ORF production ‘Wannseekonferenz’. Hochmair has already been a guest at the asphalt Festival three times: in 2018 with two Kafka evenings, in 2017 with his ‘Werther’ solo and last year with ‘Jedermann reloaded’. ‘Schiller Balladen Rave’ is Hochmair’s latest production.

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The press says:

“You follow these lines familiar from your own school days, perceive their content anew and abandon yourself to a tension-filled linguistic frenzy to industrial, rock and techno sounds.” (Hamburger Abendblatt)

“Those who feared ‘Die Glocke’ in their school days will really hear it ringing in Hochmair’s version.” (GQ)

“Hochmair’s Schiller isn’t old-fashioned German on dusty pages, it’s a physical experience, demanding, eclectic and all-encompassing.” (Austrian Limited)