SWR Symphonieorchester

Nine eleven. In this concert, this day becomes one of musical remembrance. There is hardly a more impressive, more challenging work in the history of contemporary music than Luigi Nono’s “Canto sospeso,” which translates as “The Suspended Song,” and is based on farewell letters by resistance fighters who have been condemned to death. These men, some of whom are still very young, describe their own disappearance - just like the breathing, whispering solo clarinet in Mark Andre’s Requiem composition “über”.

The madrigals of the Renaissance composer and theorist Nicola Vicentino, as well as Robert Schumann’s “Manfred Overture”, were important inspirations for Nono’s composition. The pure intonation in the early choral pieces produces a fine microtonality in the harmony, while the first chords in Schumann’s music override the metre. Here too, suspended sounds.