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Dubai – a city in search of a sound. But, what makes the city what it is? What does a city sound like? We don't mean the street noise, babble of voices or sandstorms. What is the essence of a city? The Siemens Arts Program, Ensemble Modern and the Goethe-Institut wanted to find out – and dared an experiment.

Groups of four composers were each sent to four big cities: Dubai, Johannesburg, Istanbul and the densely populated Pearl River Delta. Into... is the name of the project. Into Dubai now had its world premiere in Berlin and Frankfurt.

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Dubai: the city of superlatives and contradictions. "A fantastic vision," says composer Jörg Widmann, "yet also a horrific vision, what's being created here." The spot of sand on the Persian Gulf is the site of the world's most spectacular construction projects. A one-of-a-kind construction boom began here in the 1970s. Often, the occident looks sceptically at the gargantuan projects. There is talk of megalomania, of a blueprint city. Every day, 8,000 trucks drive through Dubai to deliver sand for the creation of artificial islands. At the same time, the city under the torrid desert sun is home to a ski run cooled to minus four degrees and entire districts supplied with regenerative energies. Some even see Dubai as a model for future urban planning.

Dubai? For heaven's sake! Composer Markus Hechtle would have liked to go to Istanbul or the Pearl River Delta. But Dubai? "I was very disappointed," he admits prior to the concert in Berlin. "I would never have voluntarily travelled to Dubai." Hechtle was already considering abandoning the project when he realized that this was precisely what would make it exciting: the chance to examine his own prejudices. His Lithuanian colleague Vykintas Baltakas also had a rather simple image of the city in the United Emirates. The thought of Dubai brought to mind flying carpets and tales from 1001 Nights. He therefore deliberately did not prepare himself for the journey: "I wanted to begin at zero."

Beginning in February 2008 the 16 composers travelled to the respective cities in search of the places' musical psyches. They worked in and on a city and composed works for the Ensemble Moderne based on their impressions. The Goethe-Institut looked after the composers on location, helped them make contacts with inhabitants, organized readings and thus created the ideal circumstances for true exchange.

Art, Not Artifice

Nonetheless each composer had their own personal way of approaching the city. Hungarian Márton Illés for instance sat in a reed hut in the historic district of Bastakiy and walked along the shore of Dubai Creek or through the colourful markets of Bur Dubai. He began composing on location. He permitted the city to take possession of him – and was forced to realize that no work before had ever so gnawed at him physically. He nearly died working on this piece, says Illés, and he nearly means it. Contrastingly, Hechtle first let his impressions set in; he did not begin composing until months after returning home. He was particularly impressed by a night spent in the desert: the beauty, the stillness, the danger. He aimed to translate what he experienced, he says, through musical metaphors.

The Sound of Dubai – audio clips from the concert rehearsals:

Vykintas Baltakas, Lift to Dubai (MP3, 3:06 Min.)
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Jörg Widmann, Dubairische Tänze (MP3, 2:39 Min.)
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Markus Hechtle, Leeres Viertel (MP3, 3:15 Min.)
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Márton Illés, Scene polidimensionali XVI "Körök" (MP3, 2:30 Min.)
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To musically capture Dubai of all places is no simple undertaking. The city reproached for its artificiality does not possess a grown culture. How can any artistic substance arise here? "There are few things more complicated to place here than music," the composers were told at the beginning of their visit by Michael Schindhelm, who has worked as a cultural manager in Dubai since 2007. "Piano playing is even described here as a finger of the devil. You are possibly something like the Columbus of music."

Some of them rediscovered themselves in this foreign place; recollected their own origins. Jörg Widmann of Munich for example; what did he bring home with him from Dubai? Waltzes, landlers and zwiefachers: he calls his nine-part work "Dubai Dances."

A Man, a City, a Microphone

The musical results are just as different as the composers' characters and the way they accessed the cities. "I was in Dubai. I had a microphone." That is all that Baltakas writes in the programme to explain his piece, a collage of sounds from recordings of lift scenes, cola commercials and a, for the listener, quite demanding collection of noises of diverse provenance, accompanied by complementarily inserted contributions by the musicians of the Ensemble Modern. In contrast, in his piece "Empty Quarter" Hechtle transformed the Ensemble almost entirely into an orchestra of percussionists, whose imitation of the sound of a crescendoing, deliberately coincidental play of wind chimes in the desert wind on sticks seems deceptively authentic.

"Into Dubai" is the third of the musical city portraits. The round will be concluded in October with inspirations from the Pearl River Delta.