Isabelle Faust

On the eve of the Musikfest Berlin two musical standalones can be heard which appeal to the central dimension of the audial experience: time and space. The French composer Philippe Manoury is interested in different forms of the perception of time. In “Le Temps, mode d’emploi”, Manoury connects two pianos with electronics, interpreted by the GrauSchumacher PianoDuo, who premiered the work. In “La lontananza nostalgica utopica future” (The nostalgic-utopian-future distance), Luigi Nono created a music of timbre, gestures, textures in space. “La lontananza” was a work commissioned by the Berliner Festwochen; it premiered in 1988 in the Kammermusiksaal. Nono himself undertook several trips, among them to Greenland, with the score of Edgard Varèse’s “Arcana” in his suitcase. This music and the sounds of icebergs accompanied Nono. Months later he wrote “La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura”. The soloist at the violin searches for a path in the sound space between recordings and the score. Isabelle Faust, one of the most striking violinists of our time, takes on this challenge. She possesses the artistic sovereignty to translate Nono’s vision into a special sound-space concept.

Luigi Nono [1924-1990]
La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura
for violin solo and tapes [1988]

Isabelle Faust violin
André Richard sound direction