Carolina Eyck, one of the finest performers on the theremin in the world, takes centre stage this morning as guest musician in a concert devoted to this mysterious instrument. In 2019, it is exactly one hundred years since the theremin was invented: an electronic musical instrument that is played by varying the distance between the hands and two antennas, with the performer never actually touching the instrument. This early electronic instrument was invented in 1919 in the Soviet Union by Léon Theremin (Lev Sergeyevich Termen, 1896–1993), a Russian inventor who, from an early age, experimented with magnetism, high-frequency circuits and optics. Around 1927 he embarked on a world tour with the theremin, astonishing audiences with its almost ghostly sounds. A year later he arrived in New York, where he applied for a patent on the theremin and sold the production licence to the American electronics company RCA. At that time he also Americanised his name to Léon Theremin. In 1930 he went on to invent the first drum machine, the rhythmicon, commissioned by the American composer Henry Cowell.
The theremin later became popular thanks in part to major performers such as Clara Rockmore, a student of Léon Theremin. Yet even today there are musicians capable of playing the theremin at the highest level, such as Carolina Eyck (1987) from Leipzig, who received her first lessons on the instrument at the age of seven from Lydia Kavina, performs concerts all over the world, and made her debut at the Berliner Philharmonie at just fifteen. With her flawless technique in mid-air, she is able to bring a wide range of musical styles to life. And that comes in handy, for in the programme The Theremin Stories she will present an overview of how the theremin has sounded over the past hundred years. She will be accompanied by the incomparable Fokker organist Ere Lievonen, with the well-known Dutch composer and performer Wouter Snoei as sidekick. Together with Carolina Eyck, Snoei will demonstrate to the audience the similarities between the theremin and the 31-tone organ by controlling the Fokker organ electronically (via a laptop).