At a theatre festival in 1989 in Landshut / Lower Bavaria, I met the director Mark Weil, who was travelling to the "West" for the first time with his theatre company of the Ilkhom Theatre from faraway Tashkent. Although I only knew 10 words of Russian and his English vocabulary did not exceed 50 words, we understood each other immediately - and a friendship began that came to an abrupt end when he was the victim of an attack in 2007 for insulting the Prophet in a theatre production in the eyes of fanatics.
It was not until 1994 that I was able to visit him for the first time in Tashkent - not only his theatre, but above all the various musical institutions in Uzbekistan, the academy, the opera, the symphony orchestra, the film studios and and and ... In the end, I had made over 75 hours of recordings, and despite the interpreter, I always only understood half of them. Three years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, I was welcomed everywhere with open arms ... Uzbek cultural life, which had previously been Soviet, was trying to reorient itself between its own tradition, Russian models and influences from the West, India, Persia and China.
In these three broadcasts for Deutschlandfunk, I present a selection from all kinds of musical genres that I was allowed to record at that time ... most of the recordings were made especially for my microphone.

Manuskript zu den Sendungen

Version for Deuschlandradio Berlin Part 01: 54:30 / Part 02: 60:35 / Part 03: 56:45
Version for Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk: 90:05