A Flat with a Thousand Windows (Part 4)

14th floor, 14D
A woman hangs upside down in her car after a traffic accident. Yet the classical radio keeps playing cheerfully, as if nothing has happened. In the hospital, Haydn’s music continues to repeat endlessly in her mind. Primo Ish-Hurwitz’s composition encompasses all kinds of transformations of Haydn—sometimes dreamlike, sometimes driving—while also leaving ample room for the original, theatrical music.

Step into A Block of Flats with a Thousand Windows, a six-part theatrical miniseries in which the walls vibrate with music, imagination, and human stories. The inventive composer and creative mind Primo Ish-Hurwitz (2001) breathes new life into Joseph Haydn’s six iconic Op. 20 string quartets—by connecting them with brand-new compositions by six leading Dutch composers of today. This is achieved in part through the sampling of old and new material—unusual in classical music, but common practice in genres such as hip-hop.

The Chaos String Quartet, together with actress Ariane Schluter and writer Joke van Leeuwen, weaves a compelling world in which past and present merge. Across six episodes, a timeless story unfolds, where sound and language, performance and emotion, meet and reinforce one another.