Heather O’Donnell

New York pianist Heather O’Donnell, one of the most talented young interpreters of New Music, will venture on a very special musical journey combining late works by Franz Liszt with Música Callada, the major piece by Catalan composer Frederic Mompou, and Wüstenwanderung by Walter Zimmermann − a philosophical treatise set to music.

Música Callada, “silent music” or “resounding solitude”, comprises piano miniatures, arranged in the course of many years, that are of utter simplicity and yet, conceived under the influence of mystical experience, bear contemplative traits. Empty, endless and timeless moments enter into dialogue with the motive of Wüstenwanderung (Desert Walk) by Walter Zimmermann − an almost unplayable piece which retraces the creation of the ‘soul of the world’ after Platon’s Timaios. Superimposed sonic layers and crossing “autonomous” voices create a seemingly ungraspable complexity that mirrors a walk along a wrong track, into the desert we have to overcome.