In March the Park Avenue Armory presented âOktophonie,â a 70-minute electronic work that is the second act of âDienstag aus Licht,â the Tuesday installment of the cycle, which depicts a cosmic battle between the forces of Michael, the archangel, and his nemesis, the fallen angel Lucifer, two of the three main characters in the cycle.  At Avery Fisher Hall â on Thursday, appropriately enough â the Lincoln Center Festival presented the first of three performances of âMichaels Reise um die Erdeâ (âMichaelâs Journey Around the Earthâ), the second act of âDonnerstag aus Lichtâ (1978-80), the Thursday installment of the cycle. The performance by Ensemble musikFabrik, a brilliant contemporary-music group from Germany, conducted by Peter Rundel, in a dazzling staging conceived and directed by Carlus Padrissa, is a triumphant realization of a challenging work.  As an act of an opera, âMichaels Reiseâ is boldly unconventional in being scored just for instruments. Instead of singers, soloists from the ensemble portray the characters, led by a trumpeter as the searching Michael, who in this act is seen taking his spiritual quest around the world.  For sheer production values, âMichaels Reiseâ is as arresting as anything you will see in an opera house. Mr. Padrissaâs staging involves mystical lighting effects, inventive videos, scrims, rotating set pieces and, to top it off, a movable crane attached to an open cage in which the trumpet virtuoso Marco Blaauw, as a punkish, wild-eyed Michael, takes his trip. During this long central segment of the 60-minute act, this mesmerizing Michael soars in his rotating cage above groups of instrumentalists, all the while playing with authority, imagination and, when called for, sassiness.  Though no one sings in âMichaels Reise,â there is intense musical drama because of the astonishing score. Stockhausen, who died in 2007 at 79, was among the most influential figures in modernist music. He was an inventor of new systems of composition, a pioneer of electronic music, and, in later decades, a visionary with a touch of megalomania. Sometimes his actual music could get lost amid all the philosophical trappings and radical hype of his pronouncements. But, when Stockhausen settled down and put notes and rhythms on paper, he was a masterly craftsman.  This was clear on Thursday during the first sections of âMichaels Reise,â called âEntranceâ and âFormula.â Act I of âDonnerstagâ (not performed here) tells the story of Michaelâs youth, his spiritual and sensual awakening through an encounter with a heavenly birdlike creature named Eve (she is the third main character of the cycle), and his training on the trumpet, which will become his means of leading humanity to God. Think of the old Kirk Douglas film âYoung Man With a Hornâ transfigured into a cosmic, German modernist opera.  In this festival staging of âMichaels Reise,â we follow along on the heroâs travels. During âEntranceâ and âFormula,â Michael announces his arrival, gets tangled into a feisty skirmish with a trombonist, and then, in a long, sinewy solo, introduces his themes, that is, his musical formula.  The music begins almost like a modernist chorale, with brassy block chords playing in staggered rhythms and halting phrases. Stockhausenâs harmonic writing is as once pungent and alluring. The music pulls you into a trance, while also engaging your musical intellect. Part of me wanted to get my hands on the score as soon as possible to see how Stockhausen built up and voiced those chords.  The score remains on this inspired level of invention as the story takes us through a far-reaching musical journey. Michaelâs first stop is in Cologne, where Stockhausen, with a touch of self-kidding, evokes the modern-music scene of that German city through complex, jagged contrapuntal writing and spiraling serialist riffs. When Michael reaches New York, bits of jazz rich with sultry brass solos, wah-wah bursts from the trumpet and syncopated percussion blend into the strands of Stockhausenâs modernist language.  In a daring touch, the production imagery depicts this scene as taking place in New York in the aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Center, here presented as the work of Lucifer. (This decision may rekindle reactions to Stockhausenâs cryptic comment at the time that the attack was âthe greatest work of art that is possible in the whole cosmos,â an allegorical image, the composer explained, that aroused intense anger. He later apologized.)  The wondrous journey continues with what sounds like Geisha bells coloring the music when Michael goes to Japan; the ensemble becomes almost a Gamelan orchestra when our hero makes it to Bali.  For all the mysticism of the story and the intelligence of the music, âMichaels Reiseâ is full of playful humor and brash energy, especially in the extended scene when Michael meets Eve, who appears as a young woman from the stars. Eve, portrayed by Nicola JÃ¼rgensen, a brilliant player of the basset horn, is dressed in a cosmic, space-traveler costume that complements Michaelâs.  Eve and Michael immediately commence a flirtatious, erotic duet. At one point their romantic play becomes a series of exchanges, like jazz players passing phrases back and forth, each time with increasingly blunt come-on melodic twists as they give in to their desires.  During the extended final episode, the music enters a mystical realm with soft, eerily sustained harmonies over a steady low drone. It was as if a single shimmering, subtly changing cosmic chord keeps lingering. When Mr. Blaauwâs Michael played fragments of melodic phrases against those lingering harmonies, the music was like Stockhausenâs homage to Ivesâs âUnanswered Question.â  This amazing staging may dominate the talk about the festivalâs presentation of âMichaels Reise.â Of course, the production had Stockhausenâs stunning score to work with.  After the ovation, as the audience exited into the promenade of Avery Fisher, five trumpeters standing apart in the three balconies that open into the space played Stockhausenâs âDonnerstags-Abschied,â a musical farewell. Hundreds of people, clearly wanting more of this music, stayed to listen to this pensive work, which lasted nearly 10 minutes.  The final performance of âMichaels Reise um die Erdeâ is on Saturday at Avery Fisher Hall; (212) 721-6500, lincolncenterfestival.org.
âMichaels Reise um die Erde,â part of Karlheinz Stockhausenâs âLichtâ cycle, had its North American premiere at Avery Fisher Hall Thursday evening.