As this season’s Composer in Focus, Hèctor Parra, who was born in Barcelona in 1976, will compose a monodrama for the Staatsorchester Stuttgart entitled I long for the Alps. The work for soprano, electronics and orchestra is commissioned in cooperation with the Orquesta Nacional de España and is based on the play of the same name by author Händl Klaus. It focuses on the fragility and powerlessness of human beings in the face of nature’s powerful forces. Ensemble member Esther Dierkes sings the part of protagonist Olivia who finds herself in a feverish delirium longing for the "Alps with their spacious coldness". Completely exhausted she bids farewell to life and wishes to be solidified in ice. The mountainous landscape forms an impressive metaphor for the dualism between beauty and death, for man's longing for nature, but also for its innate danger. With the help of electronic sounds, Parra creates the sound scope of frozen mountain peaks. It consists of modified percussive sounds of glaciers and geological crystals which penetrate the colourful orchestral sound and gradually decompose it in the way of an acoustic erosion. Embedded in the sounds of electronic, Olivia finally reaches the point of her fantasized salvation, the absorption of her inner self in nature.