“Of the pieces I heard on this trip… …(Heart Chamber) is the only one that, to my ears, challenged and reimagined the fundamentals of what an opera can be, and it did so with revelatory clarity and force. With Heart Chamber, a work that is both intimate and grand, inwardly probing and cathartically expressive, Czernowin has opened up fertile new terrain for the art form; her concept of opera is founded on a refreshing trust in the enormous dramatic potential of interior experiences so fleeting and so private that few composers would dare make them a central focus.”

“There are essentially no external events, only seismic inner ones. Most of the hallmarks of grand opera are missing—those who turn to the art form for tales of murder, adultery, incest, and apocalypse should look elsewhere—yet Czernowin summons her formidable musical forces to make every internal event… … feel immense, all-consuming, operatic to the core. Listening to this piece feels, in other words, just like it feels to be in love, in that heightened state when one seemingly chilly glance from the person you love can be a catastrophe. This is opera at once expanded and reduced to its essence: in a vital sense, it’s more operatic than La Bohème.”

“Czernowin’s elaborate mise-en-scène—amplified principal singers onstage, an orchestra in the pit, two pockets of additional instrumentalists and singers in boxes stage left and stage right, plus prerecorded sounds—yields soundscapes of ravishing intricacy, as sensuous and detailed as anything by Maurice Ravel or Olivier Messiaen.”

“In its faith in the limitless power that can be unleashed through the communal expression of inner events, Heart Chamber is a liberation.”

—Matthew Aucoin, The New York Review of Book, May 2020

“Fantastisch feine, golddurchwirkte Instrumentalmusik
(…)
Aufs Genaueste hatte sie angelegt, was nun von allen Richtungen her durch den Raum wallte und dampfte: Aufnahmen eines Bienenschwarms, dumpf wallende Schlagzeugbässe, ein Miauen in den Streichern, böige Frikative in den Sängerstimmen zum Scheitern der Liebe. Registerfarben kreuzten sich mit dynamischen Schattierungen, akustische Klänge mit elektronisch verfremdeten, Liegeakkorde mit Tönen wie Tupfen.

Passgenau schmiegten sich Libretto, Musik und die vorsichtig hergestellten Handlungsfragmente allerdings auch den Erwartungen des wohlsituierten Berliner Publikums an: eine operative Maßanfertigung für ein spezifisches Milieu, die zumindest an diesem Abend keine Wünsche offenließ.”

“Fantastically fine, gold-infused instrumental music
(…)
(Czernowin) applied everything in the most precise manner, which now floated and steamed through the room from all directions: recordings of a swarm of bees, drums sounding muffled, a meowing in the strings, gnarly fricatives in the singers' voices to the failure of love. Register colours intersected with dynamic shades, acoustic sounds with electronically alienated, lying chords with tones like speckles.

—  Christiane Tewinkel, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Nov 2019

“powerfully moving… Czernowin has taken a traditional operatic theme – love found, thwarted, possibly re-found – and given a fresh take. Rather than focusing on myth, histrionics or melodrama, she focuses on the quotidian: how we communicate by things unspoken; how a casual gesture can take over the mind. Ciofi and Henschel are convincing lovers, continually in tension. The effect is as of a dream”

—Liam Cagney, Backtrack, Dec 2019

“Die Stärke von "Heart Chamber" ist Chaya Czernowins märchenhaft raffinierte, präzise notierte Partitur, diktiert von einer empfindsamen musikalischen Fantasie, die sich die Verästelungen im Wachsen und Vergehen der Natur für ihr rauschendes Pandämonium der Klänge und Geräusche ausersehen hat. Sie kombiniert den von Johannes Kalitzke dirigierten Orchestersound mit einem im Raum postierten Vokalensemble und einem Quartett aus Percussion, E-Gitarre, Klavier und Saxophon, gemixt mit der Live-Elektronik des SWR-Experimentalstudios. Wer will und kann, denkt an Luigi Nonos Klangmystik, György Ligetis "Atmosphères"-Cluster oder Helmut Lachenmanns verstörende "Mädchen"-Oper. Die Komponistin triumphiert, auch in Ovationen, nach neunzig pausenlosen Minuten.”

“The strength of "Heart Chamber" is Chaya Czernowin's fabulously refined, precisely noted score, dictated by a sensitive musical imagination, which the ramifications in the growth and decay of nature have chosen for their roaring pandemonium of sounds and noises. It combines the orchestral sound conducted by Johannes Kalitzke with a vocal ensemble positioned in the room and a quartet of percussion, electric guitar, piano and saxophone, mixed with the live electronics of the SWR experimental studio. It conjures to mind Luigi Nono's sound mysticism, György Ligeti's "Atmosphères" cluster or Helmut Lachenmann's disturbing "Little Match-Girl” opera. The composer triumphs, after ninety non-stop minutes, receiving a standing ovation.”

—Wolfgang Schreiber, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Nov 2019

“Chaya Czernowin’s opera Heart Chamber does not depict a traditional love story, even though we see two protagonists who fall in love. Instead, we are plunged into an all-encompassing and enveloping sound world that illustrates sensory responses to the strong emotions represented on the stage. It's as if there were microphones implanted into the protagonists' brain stems that amplify their heartbeats, breath, and the sound of their nervous systems while they are immersed in the ups and downs of a romantic relationship. No, wait: the microphones seem also to be “implanted” into our own brain stems. The sounds develop uncannily before our ears; they envelope and enclose us; we feel them on our bodies and skin. The sheer abundance of sounds, in addition to the projected images and stage action, means that there is literally too much to take in at once. If there's a sensory overload, it's a mostly quiet one; by not being insistent, it invites each of us to navigate the multi-layered sonic and visual space according to our own preoccupations and psychic needs. If Czernowin’s aim is to let us feel and sense what it’s like to be “under the skin” of the protagonists, then her music also allows us access to our own inner emotional states, if we are ready to take it on…

Unlike traditional opera, the music of Heart Chamber does not reach out to you and force you to think or feel certain things. It speaks to you if you enter into it and are willing to explore its labyrinth. It also does not provide a strong plot line in the sense of narrative theater. We don’t get a sense of who these people are, or what motivates them. Even the situations alluded to (past loves, previous heartbreak) are generic and not specific. Questions remain open at the end: do they get back together? Will they break up again? Did they actually ever break up? Tellingly, the words "I love you" are uttered only once, and they explain nothing. These words, which often articulate a beginning, here occur at the very end. They are tentatively offered by the woman, who receives no answer.

People who attend Heart Chamber expecting a dramaturgy with action and a plot will be confused. Perhaps then, however, the moment of confusion will lead to the realization that Czernowin employs another dramaturgy: one of process and experience rather than resolution. The music helps us to realize this by seeming to suspend time; it allows us to hear more than we ever thought possible in a single moment. The visually rich staging by Claus Guth emphasized the work's flexible temporality with recurring images of the couple's first encounter, the physical movements of actors moving forwards and backwards, as well as with films played in both directions.”

— Anne Shreffler, Nov 2019

“Heart Chamber spoke directly from the contemporary zeitgeist—our concerns with loneliness, mental health, toxic relationships between men and women—but none of the issues it addressed were exclusively modern. Though the scoring was entirely contemporary, with its amplification and its unconventional use of singers and instruments, only a few words in the libretto located the work in a specific time or place.”

“Modern and Timeless (…) Czernowin’s work was invigorating and refreshing, with its contemporary sensibility and its experimental use of instruments and voices.”

—Elyse Lyon, Opera Wire, Dec 2019

"Man könnte 'Heart Chamber' als musikdramatisches Pendant zu den soziologischen Untersuchungen von Czernowins Landsfrau Eva Illouz verstehen, die das Schicksal der Gefühle im Kapitalismus untersucht: Ebenso isoliert wie hier wird die Liebe zum nervös befragten, mit Erwartungen überfrachteten Mittelpunkt der emotionalen Existenz. Dass sich in all dem Hauchen, Knacken, Summen kein musikalischer Ausdruck dafür findet, ist bemerkenswert und grausam. Wir scheinen im Innersten von Musik verlassen."

"One could understand 'Heart Chamber' as a musical-dramatic counterpart to the sociological studies of Czernowin's compatriot Eva Illouz, who examines the role of emotions within capitalism: where love, nervously questioned, and overloaded with expectations is the center of emotional existence. That there is no musical expression for it in all the whispering, crackling, humming is both remarkable and cruel. We seem to be abandoned by music. "

—Peter Uehling, Berliner Zeitung, Nov 2019

“Über die Liebe und ihre ebenso tragischen wie komischen Dramen ist in der Oper vermutlich längst alles gesungen worden. Was aber fehlt, ist der Akt des Verliebens selbst – übrigens auch in der Psychologie und der Philosophie. Es ist keine Handlung, eher eine Infektion, schön ausgedrückt mit der Metapher „Schmetterlinge im Bauch“. Glück und Angst sind kaum zu unterscheiden, wir rufen uns zur Ordnung, geben doch nach und lächeln dabei so blöd, dass wir uns eigentlich schämen müssten. Aber wofür?

Wir wissen es nicht, und nur darum geht es Czernowin, nicht um die Liebe, über die wir fast alles wissen. Es gelingt ihr, diesen notorisch blinden Fleck zum Klingen zu bringen, weil ihre Musik niemals ein womöglich auch noch dramatischer und zu Tränen rührender Ausdruck tiefer Gefühle sein kann. Sie ist materiell und konkret. In der Nachkriegsavantgarde gab es auch dafür Ansätze, bei Stockhausen, bei Ligeti und Lachenmann. Prägend blieben aber die formalen Reihen und ihr dialektisches Gegenteil, die Aleatorik. Dafür interessiert sich Czernowin überhaupt nicht, sie gräbt sich lieber immer weiter hinunter in die Tiefen des Klingens von was auch immer, der Singstimmen, der Instrumente.”

“Everything about love and its accompanying tragicomedy have been sung already ago in the operatic canon. But what is often missing is the act of falling in love itself - this is the case also in psychology and philosophy. It is not an action, rather an infection, which can be expressed perfectly with the metaphor "butterflies in the stomach". Happiness and fear become indistinguishable; we may try to bring ourselves to our senses, but eventually give in with smiles so giddy we might cringe with embarrassment. Why do we do this to ourselves?

We simply don't know — and that's what Czernowin explores here, rather than love itself, which we already know and understand. She locates, instead, a notoriously blind spot through her sound, avoiding a dramatic or tearful approach of expression. It is physical and concrete. In the post-war avant-garde, there were comparable approaches to this, from Stockhausen, Ligeti and Lachenmann. However, this formal approach was formative for aleatory, its own dialectical opposite. These concepts are not of interest to Czernowin; instead she prefers to dig further and further down into the depths of the sound itself, through the voices and the instruments.”

— Niklaus Hablützel, Die Tageszeitung, Nov 2019

“Šis unikālais, drosmīgais darbs pierāda laikmetīgās mūzikas un teātra iedarbības spēku.
Hajai Černovinai pieder viena no izteiksmīgākajām balsīm mūsdienu skaņu pasaulē. Viņas mūzika ir pietiekami sarežģīta, taču tā vienmēr apbur ar skaistumu un oriģinalitāti. Komponiste ir slavena ar savu bezkompromisa pieeju mākslai.

Operā izmantots pašas komponistes rakstītais teksts angļu valodā – tās ir atsevišķas frāzes, vārdi, domu un sajūtu fragmenti, brīžiem tie ir saraustīti un nepabeigti, brīžiem atgādina emocionālus tēmturus un dvēseles kliedzienus. Izrādes sižets ir ļoti abstrakts – tā ir stipra situāciju un sapņu ķēde, varoņi atveras un atkal ieslēdzas sevī, savstarpēji pievelkas un uzreiz attālinās. Piedzīvo eiforiju un krīzi. Klausītāji ir aicināti ceļot divu varoņu pārdzīvojumu labirintos, kuros aci pret aci var sastapties arī ar savu ievainojamību, nepārliecinātību un sāpēm. Sirds kamera ir stāsts ne tikai par mīlestību, bet arī par vientulību un izolāciju.    

...Sirds kameras pirmizrāde ir kļuvusi par lielu notikumu, pateicoties visu mūziķu un aktieru pašaizliedzīgajam darbam, kā arī slavenā režisora Klausa Gūta psiholoģiski detalizētajam un vizuāli smalkajam iestudējumam. ..Viņi ir radījuši spēcīgu, iedvesmojošu un aizkustinošu laikmetīgā muzikālā teātra darbu, kuru jau tagad var nodēvēt par XXI gadsimta operas šedevru.”

“This unique, daring work proves the power of contemporary music and theatre…
Chaya Czernowin has one of the most powerful voices in the world of modern sound. Her music is sophisticated, yet never fails to fascinate with beauty and originality. The composer is famous for his uncompromising approach to art.

(…) The opera uses text in English written by the composer herself - these are individual phrases, words, fragments of thoughts and feelings, sometimes jerky and unfinished, sometimes resembling emotional teasers or cries of the soul. The plot of the show is very abstract - it is a strong chain of situations and dreams; the heroes open and re-engage themselves, intertwine and instantly move away. Experiencing euphoria and crisis, listeners are invited to travel through the labyrinths of two heroes, where one can also face their own vulnerability, uncertainty and pain. The heart chamber is not only about love but also about loneliness and isolation.

The premiere of the Heart Chamber was a major event thanks to the dedication of all musicians and actors, as well as the psychologically detailed and visually subtle production of the famous director Klaus Guth (…) They have created a powerful, inspiring, and touching work of contemporary musical theatre that can already be called a 21st century opera masterpiece.”

—Jegors Jerehomovičs, Diena, Nov 2019

“That was my life,” a woman said to a friend after Czernowin’s opera. It is not a comment you hear often at “Don Giovanni” or “Tosca.”

“The wonder of “Heart Chamber” is how she uses her radical sonic palette to evoke the stream of consciousness beneath the surface of ordinary life. The most astonishing passage comes when the baritone answers the phone and accepts the idea of going for a walk. This nondescript exchange unleashes an apocalyptic inundation from the orchestra (…) We experience the terror, as well as the joy, of intense love.”

— Alex Ross, The New Yorker, Dec 2019

“Few weave such disparate sounds as deftly as Czernowin, who wraps listeners in an audiovisual tapestry while leaving threads visible.
(…)
Heart Chamber’s formal grandeur and mediated multiplicity contradict its intimacy of expression and sound. The operatic cast, orchestra, and choir, plus Ensemble Nikel’s rock-ish instruments, seem to contradict Czernowin’s microscopic levels of detail and, often, volume. Yet the space between immersing vastness and tiny sparks of human experience is where you and I and everyone fit. We all have heart chambers. Czernowin just chose to listen in.”

— Nick Stevens, I Care If You Listen, Dec 2019

“…einem räumlichen Erlebnis, das einem den Atem verschlägt. Instrumente erklingen von Orten, wo nie und nimmer Instrumente sein können; Stimmen kommen aus Richtungen, wo kein Sänger je war. Wer was singt und wo die Grenze zwischen instrumentalem und vokalem Klang verläuft – oft ahnt man es kaum. Allein das Klangerlebnis dieses Abends ist ein Ereignis.”

“…a spatial experience that takes your breath away. Instruments sound from places where there can never be instruments; voices come from directions where no singer has ever been. Who sings what, and where the line between instrumental and vocal sound runs is impossible to predict. The sonic experience of this evening is an event unto itself.”

— Detlef Brandenburg, Die Deutsche Bühne, Nov 2019

“Dieses Aufrauschende und wieder Versickernde, dieses Krasse und bald Träumerisch-Sanfte. Klanggebilde, die auch Zirpen und Atmen einschließen, ziehen mehr und mehr in ihren Bann. Selten hat das Publikum so konzentriert zugehört wie bei diesem Auftragswerk der Deutschen Oper Berlin.”

“Those which rush up and then trickle off; those that are extreme and then suddenly dreamy and gentle. These sounds, from the chirping of crickets to breathing, become more and more captivating. It is seldom that the audiences of the Deutsche Oper Berlin should have listened with such rapture to a new commission. “

— Ursula Wiegand, Online Merker, Nov 2019

“eine Oper die anmutet wie eine mikroskopisch genaue Autopsie der Liebe (…) spannt Czernowin ein dichtes Netz aus vielstimmig verdichtetem Tutti und sorgfältigster Transparenz. Ganz bei sich ist Czernowin in den Passagen polyphonen Flüsterns und exquisit artikulierten Atmens.”

“An opera that seems like a microscopic autopsy of love (…) Czernowin spans a dense network of polyphonic condensed tutti and meticulous transparency. Czernowin is completely at home in the passages of polyphonic whispers and exquisitely articulated breathing.”

— Anton Schlatz, Opern and Konzertkritik Berlin, Nov 2019

“Der Moment könnte banaler nicht sein. Er geht eine Treppe hinauf, sie kommt diese herunter, ein Honigglas haltend, das ihr aus der Hand fällt. Er hebt es auf und gibt es ihr zurück. Sie warnt ihn, er möge vorsichtig sein, es sei zerbrechlich. Er erwidert, es schiene ihm fest genug. So beginnt eine Liebe. Beginnt so die Liebe?

Eine „Untersuchung über die Liebe“nennt die in Haifa geborene, in Boston lebende Komponistin Chaya Czernowin ihr am Freitag in der Deutschen Oper Berlin mit langem Beifall quittiertes neues Musiktheaterwerk. 
(…)
Schicht um Schicht bohrt sich Chaya Czernowins „Heart Chamber“in die Herzkammer der Liebe. Dazu braucht es keine „Geschichte“im herkömmlichen Sinn. Das selbst geschriebene Libretto (mit banalen Satzfloskeln bis zum final-kitschigen „I love you“) ist selbst schon wie eine Partitur angelegt: Den beiden zentralen, namenlosen Figuren, sie Sopran, er Bariton (Patrizia Ciofi und Dietrich Henschel sind famosvirtuose Singschauspieler) sind ihre inneren Stimmen beigestellt: ihr ein Alt (Noa Frenkel), ihm ein Countertenor (Terry Wey). Das umfasst also pointiert den Kosmos der menschlichen Stimme an sich.”

“…„Heart Chamber“nach und nach sickert, im faszinierenden Sinn nachklingt, Stunden, Tage danach, wie von selbst auf. So gesehen und gehört in den vielfältigsten, minuziös elaborierten, radikal und essenziell verdichteten „Stimmungen“aller klanglichen und szenischen Parameter: eine maßstäbliche Uraufführung, großes, das heißt aber auch: komplexes Musiktheater als enorm sinnliches (Klang-)Abenteuer. Über die Liebe. Und über die Liebe hinaus.”

“The moment couldn't be more banal. He goes upstairs, she comes down, holding a jar of honey that fell from her hand. He picks it up and gives it back to her. She warns him to be careful; it is fragile. He replies that it seems firm enough. That's how love begins. Is this how love begins?

An “investigation of love” is what the Haifa-born composer Chaya Czernowin, who lives in Boston, calls her new musical theatre work that was received warmly on Friday at the Deutsche Oper Berlin.
(…)
Layer by layer, Chaya Czernowin's “Heart Chamber” bores into a heart chamber of love. This does not require a “story” in the traditional sense. The self-written libretto (with banal phrases even up to the final kitschy "I love you") itself is laid out like a score: the two central, nameless characters, soprano and a baritone (Patrizia Ciofi and Dietrich Henschel are famously virtuoso singers) as well as inner voices, provided by alto (Noa Frenkel) and countertenor (Terry Wey). Together these encompass the cosmos of the human voice itself.

“…Heart Chamber” seeps away, gradually, and intriguingly, seemingly across a span of hours and days, as if in a time of its own. "Moods" of all sonic and scenic parameters are varied, meticulously elaborated, radically and essentially condensed. This is a large-scale premiere indeed, but it is also intricate musical theatre, and an enormously sensual (sound) adventure. About love — and beyond.”

— Karl Harb, Salzburger Nachrichten, Nov 2019

“Alle großen und kleinen Anfragen der Liebe sind  gestellt an diesem Abend, was das Körperliche betrifft was den Geist vielleicht auch die Seele angeht...  Aber es gibt keine Handlung was stattdessen gibt ist ein Reihe von Zuständen und von Befragungen. ..

Ich finde es ein stück das wirklich in  jeder moment auf dem punkt ist, unglaublich kraftvoll, es sind hier auch ganz neue dinge die sie erstmals  überhaupt wahrscheinlich integriert hat....Es ist durchaus so konzentriert über weite Strecken und auch so  anspruchsvoll im positiven Sinne anstrengend dass man also auch nicht nur als ausführender sondern auch als Zuhörer zu hören wirklich diese 90 Minuten mit höchster Konzentration dabei sein muss”

“Professions of love, large and small were made on this evening, in the physical realm, as well as in the mind, and perhaps even the soul... Yet instead of action, what occurs instead is a series of emotional landscapes and interrogations.

I find this to be a piece that is constantly in the moment, incredibly powerful, and there are completely new things that the listener may be experiencing for the first time .... The work is so concentrated over long periods, and so demanding in positive terms that it is exhausting, yet necessary to listen to these 90 minutes with maximum concentration — not only as a performer but as a listener also.”

— Jörn Florian Fuchs, Deutschlandfunk, Nov 2019

“Wie viel konzentrierter und wirkungsvoller sind dagegen die Mittel in Czernowins «Heart Chamber» eingesetzt: Auf der Bühne agieren das Ensemble Nickel mit E-Gitarre, Saxofon, Klavier und Schlagwerk sowie der Kontrabassist Uli Fussenegger vom Klangforum Wien, im Graben sitzt das Orchester der Deutschen Oper. Die ausgefeilte Elektronik, perfekt verlebendigt durch das SWR-Experimentalstudio, erzeugt einen Raumklang von atemberaubender Wirkung. Über konzise neunzig Minuten entfaltet sich ein Psychogramm, das immer tiefer in das Innere der Figuren führt. Eine audiovisuelle Aufzeichnung des neuen Czernowin-Werks soll beim Label Naxos erscheinen – gut so!”

“Czernowin's "Heart Chamber” used highly focussed and effective means: Ensemble Nickel featured electric guitar, saxophone, piano and percussion and the double bass player Uli Fussenegger from the Klangforum Wien act ingon the stage, the orchestra of the Germans lay in the pit. The sophisticated electronics, brought to life immaculately by the SWR experimental studio, created a spatial sound to breathtaking effect. Over a concise ninety minutes, a psychogram unfolds that led ever deeper into the interior of the figures. An audiovisual recording of the work should appear soon on the Naxos label - and rightly so!”

—Marco Frei, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Nov 2019

“Il reste cependant au Final une intense dernière image, d’un couple assis chacun de son côté dans une chambre presque vide, tout deux amoureux mais remplis de contradictions et de faiblesses, tout deux à leurs pensées par une fragile journée d’automne.”

“The final image is intense, of a couple each sitting on their side in an almost empty room, both in love but filled with contradictions and weaknesses, both of them thinking on a fragile autumn day.”

— Vincent Guillemin, ResMusica, Nov 2019

“If Claus Guth’s elegant staging managed to anchor the opera in just enough narrative reference points to suggest a conventional emotional arc hidden among the fragments, it was Ms Czernowin’s daring musical complexity and her capacity for spellbinding moments of abstraction that made Heart Chamber a singular experience.
(…) As the nature of sound was paramount, the vocal lines were often treated less as a tool for dramatic development than a contributing component within the aural landscape. The two characters and their internal voices spent as much time whispering, breathing, speaking, or creating frantic outpourings of fragmented syllables as they did locking into anything that resembled a traditional line. If this array of extended vocal technique seemed designed to deny us one of the greatest pleasures of the opera house – the carefully crafted notes of a great voice – it also yielded unexpectedly arresting moments: the torrent of barely-verbal sounds that underscored the narration of the female inner voice in the Dream III sequence was as captivating as it was unnerving.

In each of the past four seasons the Deutsche Oper has managed to bring at least one new work to the stage. Of those works, which have included new operas from Aribert Reimann and Georg Friedrich Haas, Heart Chamber is perhaps the most conspicuously challenging, both in its logistical demands and in its composer’s restless determination to avoid the easy paths of musical and dramatic expression. Yet Heart Chamber, for all its complexity, remained a simple work. Beneath its stylistic plurality, its fragmentary story and its highly distilled characters, there was just enough familiarity to provide the open-minded listener a way into Ms Czernowin’s world.”

— Jesse Simon, Mundo Clasico, Dec 2019

“Strip away the sentiment and it can be a terrifying process. Falling in love is confrontational. The vertigo, the vulnerability, the conflicts and the perilously high stakes — all of them are palpable in Chaya Czernowin’s Heart Chamber, which was given its world premiere at Berlin’s Deutsche Oper. Less narrative, more overwhelming sound experience, Heart Chamber is a fragmentary collage of gossamer sound effects that is intimate, strange, wonderful, and frustrating. Part of the work’s fundamental paradox is that vast forces (chorus, orchestra, chamber ensemble, soloists) are required to produce very little noise. Czernowin’s sound world emphasises the range between soft and very, very soft, and it is at its most memorable when representing a kind of frantic scrabbling, like so many insects trying to penetrate the walls of the opera house... 

It is deftly made and beautifully wrought. But what is it all about?.. Heart Chamber compromises its own theatricality as it tangles with the intrinsic stasis of its central concept. Nothing really happens, though it does not happen with great delicacy and beauty. As with so many happily-ever-afters, you are left wondering: and then what”

— Shirley Apthorp, Financial Times, Nov 2019

“(Heart Chamber) aspires to a kind of realism that feels impossible to achieve: putting love on stage and in music not as a story with an end, but rather as a direct evocation of the feelings that flit across the mind and body of the love-struck. We might call them butterflies of giddiness, gnawing jealousy, the tingle of anticipation, or heartache. In Czernowin’s score, they become swarms of percussive clicks, terrific tides of low brass, cascading scales on the piano, and whispers at the top of the electric guitar’s fretboard.

…Czernowin leaves gods and fates in the past. The composer’s sound is that of butterflies in the stomach, her narrative logic that of the butterfly effect.”

— Nicholas Stevens, Cleveland Classical, Dec 2019

“Das kann man eigentlich nicht verbal beschreiben, man muss sich den Eindrücken hingeben und mitfühlen oder sich mitziehen lassen. Die Kunst dabei ist hier, mit der Hilfe von Klängen aus den Musikinstrumenten, eingefügten Sprach- und Gedankenfetzen und elektronischer Unterstützung ein Klanggewebe zu erzeugen. Das führt durch seine emotionale Kraft bis zur körperlichen Wahrnehmung der Gefühle und optischen Eindrücke, auf die man lauschen kann oder muss, um ein dann jedoch passiver Teil der erzeugten Stimmung zu werden.”

“It is not an experience which can fully be described with words, you must indulge in the impressions, empathise, and allow yourself to be drawn in. The art here lies in the creation of a sound fabric, supported by live instruments, but interjected with fragments of speech, thoughts and electronics. This forms a path from emotional strength to the physical perception of emotions, and visual impressions that are essential to becoming a part of the emotional landscape of the work.”

—Peter Dahms, OpernInfo Berlin, Nov 2019

”What new imaginative terrains might now  be open for opera to explore? And how  might this be done? Such questioning seems  to be at the core of the operatic work of the  Israeli composer Chaya Czernowin. In her 2016 Opera Infinite Now, for example, she reimagined the opera house as an acoustic space inside the head, heart and body of its characters-an approach she develops with enormous skill and refinement in Heart Chamber, her fourth opera, premiered by Deutsche Opera Berlin in November 2019 when it was filmed for this outstanding release. “

-Christopher Ballantine, Opera Magazine, June 2021

“...the Israeli composer’s fourth major stage work cements her reputation as one of the most intriguing music theatre voices of recent years.

Czernowin sees these sounds as a reflection of something discovered that was always there but never realized. That could almost stand as a metaphor for Heart Chamber itself, a newly exposed musical world that’s well worth investigating.”

-Clive Paget, Limelight Magazine, May 2021

“It is an intriguing opera about the extraordinary in the everyday and I would love to experience it live.”

-Opera Now, May/June 2021

“Though her works are still hardly known in Britain, Chaya Czernowin is a major, distinctive voice in new music on both sides of the Atlantic.

it’s Czernowin’s luminous orchestral writing, with its ravishing electronic enhancements and a small chorus of voices in the pit, that compels attention and binds the work together.”

-Andrew Clements, Guardian, March 2021

“A woman drops a jar of honey on a busy stairway. A stranger picks it up and gives it to her. Their hands touch. From that chance encounter results the complicated love affair that the much-performed Israeli-American composer Chaya Czernowin explores in her brilliant new opera, Heart Chamber.
With tangible immediacy, she tightly interweaves her music with her own libretto. It feels organic, pertinent and real – like life itself.”

-Pamela Margles, The WholeNote Magazine, May 2021

“Underneath the chill of it all the music of Heart Chamber burns with a suppressed fire, making the smoldering emotions palpable. Czernowin’s dense, sustained sound textures and haunting murmurings keep one spell-bound from start to finish. The charged score is flawlessly performed by the musicians, singers and soloists of the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Hats off to composer Chaya Czernowin and conductor Johannes Kalitzke.”

-Contemporary Classical-Thea Derks

INSIDE - OUT... "Heart Chamber" by Chaya Czernowin has a similar subdued path as Debussy's "Pelleas et Mélisande" - my favourite opera by the way -of course with the refined means of the post Lachenmann/ Xenakis orchestra. The astonishing part for me was today that no allusion to opera as a historic apparatus came up, which makes Heart Chamber an autonomous work. Bravo!
—Walter Zimmermann

Experiencing Heart Chamber, I can see how some might view it as a simple work. Indeed, it is simple; it seems to be conceived organically, each moment of the work sewn into a moment of lived experience. It is simple in the manner of drawing a breath, or becoming lost in memory; there are no knowing allusions or intellectual sleights of hand here. Heart Chamber is hyper-confessional, it is non-hierarchical and it is, at its core, personal.

Heart Chamber captures the simultaneous simplicity yet boundless intricacy inherent in the experience of an individual in tension with their environment. In the life of a woman, it seems, simplicity becomes an outer shell, sometimes protective and sometimes veiling. Within perceived simplicity lies a rich inner life, constantly bound by tensions; between individual and institution, memory and moment.

Yes, the language of Heart Chamber is simple. But more than that; Heart Chamber redefines simple. There now exists a canon of work in every discipline capturing the women’s experience as it is felt — mundane yet hazardous, precipitous yet unrelenting. Indeed, like Plath, Woolf, and Bourgeois, Czernowin argues that a woman’s experience is simple — but it is because of this that it is everything
—Lauren Marshall

"You somehow managed to take an age-old theme, the relationship between man and woman, and find a new point to explore without irony. The direct, honest, and almost scientific query in what love actually means, is it physical, is it social, is it for the continuation of the human race? How do men and women find this point to be together and how does the human "swarm"  come into our subconscious and take away our individual freedom in the love relationship.

To the simple stage elements like the honey jar, which looked like a piece of gold from afar, representing to me the dowry - the product of the hive, the heavy burden of being a woman where you feel like to you have to pay (or the hive has to pay) for your own existence to be loved and married - paying a man to take you away because you will just create more mouths to feed, more workers for the common goal.

(The) honey jar was a jaw dropping point for me that caught me directly in the gut
because it speaks out what should not be left unspoken (but to this point is never expressed)
The unspoken elements of a dispositive are the most dangerous for the mind and society.”
—Leah Muir

Having now seen Czernowin's 'Heart Chamber' a second time and in much better acoustic conditions than were present at the dress rehearsal, I am ready to say it is one of the most staggering and brutally savage and obliterating pieces of music (theater) I have ever seen/heard. It is very hard for me to precise exactly why this is the case in purely music terms, but if I could turn to other art forms I would say that the experience was akin to stepping inside of love as if it were the disturbingly sinewy and organic cavity of Gaudi's Sagrada Familia, taking the critical gazes of both Antonioni and Haneke and then directing this combined artistic laser to sear and rend and drill straight into the heart of the organism while you are still within it and become gradually enveloped in its fleshy disintegration. Except all in music. It was love stripped of its metaphysical pretensions and excavated down to the cold, unthinking narcotic logic of chemical and biological processes. Simply astonishing and in many ways deeply horrific but absolutely 100% worth seeing.
—Eli Simić-Prošić

In my ears and my understanding, the piece moves on the verge of a different rationality: it is not suggestively facing towards a possible experience, that is, merely occupying its own 'phenomenon' - but materialising perception itself. I had to re-read parts of Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft, especially his transcendental aesthetic (he still uses the term "aesthetic" as "perception" or "Erkenntnis").
This might explain what I was looking for: "daß uns die Gegenstände an sich gar nicht bekannt sind, und, was wir äußere Gegenstände nennen, nichts anderes als bloße Vorstellungen unserer Sinnlichkeit sind" ("objects themselves are not known to us at all, and what we call external objects are nothing more than mere conceptions of our sensuality") which to me in relation to Heart Chamber opens the question of formalizing the "Vorstellungen unserer Sinnlichkeit", and making it accessible or 'perceivable': perceiving perception - talking about a medium in terms of its own limits and so on.

Claus Guth put it in a very sympathetic way - "its like putting your ear onto someone and listen to what is going on inside her". Because of this way of writing, you delegate much more agency to the listener. The pure metaphysics (or lets say the ontology) of the sound becomes almost unimportant because it needs perception to be transformed into "Vorstellung unserer Sinnlichkeit" as the thing itself ("das wahre Korrelatum, [...] das Ding an sich selbst") does not exist or is inaccessible to us. This, in turn, necessitates trust in the listener - - Heart Chamber, to me, is a beautifully poetic examination of the metaphysics of perception, marked by the tension of the impossibility of perceiving perception.
—Lukas Nowok