A portrait film about Bernd Alois Zimmermann, his solo sonata performed by Bernese violinist Gabrielle Brunner, and a conversation: Once again we take a profound look at Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s work and also encounter him from his personal side.

Zimmermann once wrote that his compositions for solo instruments are pieces of «loneliness and silence, and musical thinking stripped of any superficiality». In the solitude of his violin sonata he entered into a dialogue with Johann Sebastian Bach. The BACH motive is interwoven in various ways in the twelve-tone structure. Gabrielle Brunner plays the piece in the foyer.

After performing so many different Zimmermann pieces at the Musikfestival Bern this year, the question still remains: Who really was this composer? What kind of person? What did he think, what moved him? As «a very Rhenish blend of monk and Dionysus» he referred to himself, as «rebellious» and constantly being «caught between two stools». Bettina Ehrhardt’s film portrait «Mönch und Dionysos» tells us more about it.

Thereafter Thomas Meyer will have a discussion with Bettina Zimmermann, the daughter of composer Bernd Alois Zimmermann, as well as with the pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach and the trumpet player Manfred Schoof.