Two anniversaries and a retrospective: Furrer 70 / Nono 100

For the closing episode of Radio Schallfeld in 2024, we present a look back on two major anniversaries that marked this year in contemporary music:

The 29. January saw the 100. anniversary of the birthday of Luigi Nono. Nono was one of the major artistic voices in the new music emerging after the second world war. His strong political attitude met with a keen interest in the human voice and in art and literature from all centuries. Musicall he paired the expressivity of large-scale works such as operas and orchestral pieces with alive-long fasciation for silence and deep exploration of sonic details that runs as undercurrent throughout all his oeuvre.

Born two generations later than Nono, Swiss-born composer and conductor Beat Furrer just celebrated his 70. birthday on the 7. of December. He shares some musical interests with the 30-years older Nono – the love for exploring the human voice, a lifelong obsession with music theatre that resulted in many large-scale works, a love for literature and ancient philosophy, and the desire to create music that demands and challenges intense listening, both by rhythmical intensity as well as by rich soundworlds that often touch the borders of silence.

To celebrate Nono and Furrer, this episode features a selection of music that connects both composers, their life and ideas through a range of diverse musical styles: from John Coltrane’s jazz classic „giant steps“ (reminding Furrer’s early beginnings as pianist and keen lover of Jazz), to Luigi Nono’s das atmende klarsein (a major work which also inspired Furrer), we will hear Furrer’s clarinet quintet „intorno al bianco“ that resonates with Nono’s late soundworld, and we close with a Madrigal by Claudio Monteverdi (renaissance composer and one of the fathers of music theatre) and the „concerto a tre“ by Furrer’s teacher Roman Haubenstock-Ramati. To spare you yet another birthday interview, this will be a mostly unmoderated hour of music. So, sit back, listen & enjoy!

Tracklist:

John Coltrane – Giant Steps

Luigi Nono – das atmende klarsein (Roberto Fabbriciani, Freiberuger Vokalsolisten, Experimentalstudio Freiburg)

Beat Furrer – intorno al bianco (Klangforum Wien)

Claudio Monteverdi – Hor che’l ciel e terra (John Eliot Gardiner & Monteverdi Choir)

Roman Haubenstock-Ramati – Concerto a tre (Ensemble Recherche)

host, concept, production: Margarethe Maierhofer-Lischka