Welcome remarks: Arnošt Kareš, Consul General of the Czech Republic

Concept and Introduction: Michael Lahr von Leïtis

With Peter Kendall Clark (Recitation)

Jeannie Im (Soprano)

and Dan Franklin Smith (Piano)

Part dramatic reading, part concert, the musical-literary collage The World According to Kafka juxtaposes texts from Franz Kafka’s short stories, diaries, letters, and aphorisms with compositions by his Czech contemporaries as well as Kafka-settings by German contemporary composer Stefan Heucke.

In his stories, Franz Kafka (1883 – 1924) leaves behind the realm of the possible and probable world in order to better understand the real world. His protagonists often are helplessly confronted by anonymous powers; they are imprisoned in a maze without exit. Fear and failure are dominant topics. In vain his protagonists look for a way out. A master of the absurd, Kafka describes the most fantastic events with a clarity and precision, that leads the reader to the limits of thinking. In Kafka’s work the great upheaval of the 20th century is expressed almost like a vision. Like no other author, Kafka describes the emotional framework and living conditions of modernity.

Baritone Peter Kendall Clark will narrate Franz Kafka’s texts. Soprano Jeannie Im will present some of Kafka’s favourite melodies by Friedrich Silcher and Carl Loewe, as well as songs by Czech composers Max Brod, and Adolf Schreiber, and twelve-tone-settings of Kafka’s prose by Stefan Heucke. Elysium’s Music Director Dan Franklin Smith complements the musical selections with piano solo pieces by Joseph Bohuslav Foerster, Pavel Haas, Leos Janácek, Bohuslav Martinu, Viteslav Novák, Erwin Schulhoff, Josef Suk and Viktor Ullmann.

The musical-literary collage The World According to Kafka consists of four parts: the first one deals with The Ideal and its Unattainability, the second part is titled The Individual and the World, the third one is centered around the topic of Illness and Death, and the fourth part focuses on Redemption and Paradise.

The event is organised by Elysium – Between Two Continents, The Lahr von Leïtis Academy & Archive and the Consulate General of the Czech Republic in New York .