Imaginary Landscape (I)

18.00 Saal der Orangerie / Orangerie hall:

inti fiiggis-vizueta: To give you form and breath (2019)

John Cage: Imaginary landscape No. 1 (1939)

Alexandre Babel: Snare Counterpoint (2023)

Zwischen den beiden Konzerten im Orangeriegarten:
Between the two concerts in the Orangerie garden:

Cathy Van Eck: La Nature dans le Miroir (2020)

Romane Bouffioux (Percussion)
Jennifer Torrence (Percussion)
Ane Marthe Sørlien Holen (Percussion)
Corentin Marillier (Percussion)

John Cage was clairvoyant in his imagination and formulation of much that continues to occupy artists generations and decades later. In addition to fundamental questions such as ‟Where does music begin, where does it end, and what criteria determine this?”, Cage’s works also provide early examples of different media integration into composition, which has become so important today, or the creation of a work as an environment or performance with installation elements. A downright iconic representation of this is Imaginary Landscape No. 1 from 1939, in which Cage combines acoustic instruments with electronic devices, considered to be one of the very first electro-acoustic pieces. Here, the electronic part consists of two record players on which frequency recordings are played at different speeds. Cage used test records with tracks of individual frequencies, intended for device calibration, but also for testing a room’s acoustic characteristics, reverberation times, reflections, and echoes.

This concert program, in which different musical, aesthetic, and origin-related perspectives come together, was created in collaboration with the Swiss percussionist Romane Bouffioux, Kranichstein Music Prize winner for Interpretation 2023. In the trio To Give You Form And Breath, composed in 2019, Inti Figgis-Vizueta seeks a connection between narrated history and indigenous identity, for an understanding of our world that relies on a temporal continuum. What happens when manipulated rhythm is perceived as a manipulation of time?

In Snare Counterpoint, the Swiss composer, percussionist, and improviser Alexandre Babel relies on rhythm as the defining basic medium for a ten-minute snare drum crescendo.

Between the two hour-long concerts, the beautiful Orangerie garden provides the perfect backdrop for Cathy Van Eck’s La Nature dans le Miroir – an intricate interplay between nature and its simulation.