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Das Atmende Klarsein

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These are works(except for the hommage to Dallapiccola) on Nono's creative voyage to his oratorio-like "Prometeo". Many Nono scholars believe it was this piece for Pollini"sofferte onde serene" that began Nono's turn away from directly political subject matter toward a privitization of his aesthetic agenda. If you know his music intimately you can actually see no creative break at all. The massive block chords and fascination on the pure power of sound runs like a bold spine through all of Nono's music. In "sofferte" or "serene waves endured" we have another masterwork for the piano. It is Nono's only work for piano, and Pollini has played it all over Europe(not any more). Nono's aesthetic strategy here is to cross the timbres between the piano and the magnetic tape. Four speakers project the pre-recorded sound in the concert hall full front facing the audience. So we see Nono's early interest in the spatialization of sound. The material on the tape is Pollini playing what Nono expects to played live only manipulated freely. The effect is haunting and spellbinding, with low percussive like thuds and tympani-like moments coming from the tape while the live pianist plays beautiful bell-like tones in the piano's tinkly upper registers. Of course all this spatialization counterpoint doesn't quite come across on the CD, how can it?. Yet you will get the message of introspection here and sensitivity. "Das Atmende Klarsein" or a rough translation Breathing Being is another etude-like piece. Nono was fascinated by microintervals the last ten years of his life. He died in May 1990. And here he has an ample protagonist in the rich sensual quality of the bass flute. You might find this piece less emotionally focused than the "sofferte" yet you need to think that this was an early etude-like work in Nono's last creative period.Of course there is always the negativity what does it mean that a committed Marxist writes this kind of relatively private music?. Nono remained committed to the human condition his whole life, I think he felt that dealing directly with political subject matter was not so much a dead end but that he had done all there was to do. The music he wrote from the early Fifties to roughly the mid-Seventies attests to an extraordinary body of work engaged with the political problems and images of this century.