‘Out of nothing’ and into ‘nothing’

For Sciarrino those are crucial categories of expression. When composing he is just as interested in what does not resound as in what does. He is an explorer of musical antimatter.” (Claus Spahn) – Sciarrino’s Lohengrin (1984) in a new recording by the young Milan Ensemble Risognanze, along with the world premiere recording of Vento d’ombra (2005).

The opera as a radio play: the instruments build the scenery, the orchestra creates the ambience. This first ever live recording of Salvatore Sciarrino's "Lohengrin," namely of the production performed at the Tiroler Festspiele Erl, now finally documents the original intention of the Sicilian composer. The musical adaptation of the symbolist prose of the French writer Jules Laforgue develops before us as though our eyes were listening. The intense voice of Marianne Pousseur hurls the dream projections of Elsa's affair with Lohengrin against the fragile sound wall created by Sciarrino's compositional language. The Ensemble Risognanze under Tito Ceccherini intensifies the physical listening space by its sensitive sound gestures, having opened it by the cantabile fragments of the instrumental piece "Vento d'ombra" as a kind of prologue.