With Protest of the Physical, lovemusic presents a performance in four tableaux. The musicians' bodies are not simply vehicles for instrumental performance, but are fully engaged in expressive physicality. They are both intrinsically linked to the music and its physical demands, and serve as a foil for the way gesture shapes our listening experience.

By integrating artists from different disciplines into the creative process, rethinking the role of the audience and reclaiming the body as a powerful communication tool, the collective's performers boldly assert their singular identity as performers.

Notes on intent
In Protest of the Physical, lovemusic continues its in-depth exploration of the body as an essential source and vector of musical creation. This new project includes three new works created for the collective's musicians, in which gesture, sound and perception intertwine to offer an embodied experience.

Contre No. 1 —15 min. (2016)
Kuba Krzewinski
for violin and cello

In die Ferne, dem Berg zu —15 min. (2025)
Annette Schlünz,
Anne-Hélène Kotoujansky
for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, electric guitar, and choreographed movements
Creation, Commissioned by lovemusic

In die Ferne, dem Berg zu was born out of a collaboration, proposed by lovemusic, between composer Annette Schlünz and choreographer Anne-Hélène Kotoujansky. An inland sea, bodies adrift: this new piece explores the space of pain, loss, and the unsaid, questioning what a body produces when it is tense, silent, or resistant. The piece takes shape through a process of dialogue, an exchange of gestures and sounds. The musicians of lovemusic become actors in a shared movement, each physically engaged in the space, alone or in a group. Visible sounds, silent gestures, sound material, and physical material intertwine. Stones are manipulated, moved: symbols of what weighs us down, of what remains. Marks on the ground, like landmarks set so as not to get lost.In die Ferne, dem Berg zu traverses states of flight, separation, and distance. What is dear to us ends up escaping us. The light recedes. The body takes the blow. But it is precisely in this disorientation that a language can emerge. Not the language of words, but that of action: a tension, a breath, a friction. A resonance. An attempt at transformation.

hands, drum - three bones — 12 min. (2025)
Nik Bohnenberger
for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, electric guitar, electronics, video, and audience participation
Creation, commissioned by the Philharmonie Luxembourg for lovemusic

Inhands, drum - three bones, it is the audience that engages physically and bodily in listening to the music. Nik Bohnenberger offers music that interacts with an immersive device in which the audience is invited to physically influence their own listening experience. By covering or orienting their ears, spectators influence their perception of sounds, thus revealing the body's sonic activity. The ear is no longer a simple receiver, but a vibrant participant in the musical experience.

Seed –15 min. (2025)
Bethany Younge
for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, electric guitar
Creation, Commissioned by lovemusic

In Bethany Younge'sSeed, movement takes center stage in a fully choreographed score. The performers mimic their instruments through a series of intense and offbeat gestures, weaving a network of physical and sonic presences where memory and bodily transformation are at work. It is only after this gestural journey that they actually play their instruments: a turning point where sound and bodily identity crystallize.

[iɱˈfɛrno] (excerpt from: MAPPA) Contrapasso I – V (to Vladimir Putin / Sergey Lavrov)
Helmut Oehring — 15 min. (2022)
for bass flute, bass clarinet, cello, electric guitar, and tape
Commissioned by lovemusic and the klangwerkstatt festival (Berlin)

Written for lovemusic in 2022 for their Talking Music project, [iɱˈfɛrno] (from: MAPPA) Contrapasso I - V by Helmut Oehring is inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy, and more specifically by the concept of Contrapasso, where each sin is punished in an echo of its nature. This five-part piece alternates instrumental passages with sequences in which the four musicians perform signed gestures, a poetic sign language developed by the composer, for whom sign language is his mother tongue. The work questions the political, emotional and symbolic dimensions of language, body and sound in a contemporary context marked by war.