Luigi Nono: La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura

The trilogy of the sublime, three nights with the music of Luigi Nono, will be completed by a special late night concert of Nono's La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura from 1988. It's a composition

for violin and tape, and one of the last works the Italian avant-garde composer created. The composition will be performed by violinist Irvine Arditti and sound director André Richard, former right hand man of the composer.

‘Caminantes, no hay caminos, hay que caminar’ (Travellers, there are no roads, there is just travelling') – this aphorism, which Luigi Nono found on a wall in a monastery in Toledo, was a source of inspiration for a number of the compositions he created in the later stages of his life, including La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura. Nono dedicated the work to fellow composer Salvatore Sciarrino, who explains the title as follows: 'The past reflected in the present (nostalgica) brings about a creative utopia (utopica), the desire for what is known becomes a vehicle for what will be possible (futura) through the medium of distance (lontananza).' The composition was created in collaboration with violinist Gideon Kremer – whom Nono met for the first time in 1987 – and had its world premiere on 3 September 1988 at the Berliner Festwochen. Therefore, the full title of the piece became: La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura, madrigale per più ‘caminantes’ con Gidon Kremer – The nostalgic-utopic future disance, madrigal for various travellers with Gideon Kremer – as Nono often wrote his later works with a specific musician in mind. The fellow traveller is, in this case, Irvine Arditti. The final version of La lontananza is different from the version which was used for earlier performances. Nono rewrote the violin part and reviewed its relationship to the electronic component. The six parts for the violin are divided over six music stands, which are spread across the stage and the auditorium. The soloist walks, sometimes saunters, from one stand to the other to be able to play the next part. To create a sense of unpredictability, there are two to four empty music stands – the exact number is up to the soloist - which are placed among the other stands in the auditorium. Nono has not written an easy score for the violinist, prescribing extremely dynamic instructions and forcing the musician to experiment with his tone continually and to convey an enormous range of sounds – the score for his part contains more instructions than notes. While the violinist wanders between his notes, the engineer is operating the tape, which has been created from recordings of ambient sound and violin improvisations by Gideon Kremer, which Nono treated afterwards. One of the instructions for the sound director states that the different tracks should never be played all at once; on the other hand, silence from the electronic component is permitted. Although Nono has written all this down, the performance actually comes to life through the interaction between the violinist and the engineer, as both allow themselves to respond to the other. The violinist is not the soloist; both parties are equally important, together creating a spatial, typically Nono-esque experience of sound.