Musikfestival Bern, 3.–7. September 2025, «Kette» Musikfestival Bern, 3.–7. 9. 2025, «Kette» Press

Musikfestival Bern, 3.–7. September 2025, «Kette» Musikfestival Bern, 3.–7. 9. 2025, «Kette»

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Nighttime

Time Stretch / Time Folds / Time Islands

1/1Film still: L'Eclisse (F/I 1962)

Sounds stretch, they linger and fill the room. In an ancient building, like the Bern Cathedral, the entire architecture reverberates with sound from dusk until deep into the night.

Three big concert sections with pieces by Zimmermann, Rosenberger and Radigue form the framework of this great time structure. In between, heavenly voices: the vocals from way back when, the electronic ones from modern times. Time folds and unfolds with them in wondrous ways.

Music floats on this night; the room vibrates softly – and, at times, more intensely. Music and time glide and, at times, melt. When does one piece end and another begin? The frame, the timeframe that makes a piece of music a piece of music, dissolves. The improvised, the unforeseen meddles, even though it is often hardly distinguishable from the composed; soundscapes build, traces of sounds pull and extend, move around single notes, swirl around them in smallest intervals, like a Bordun sound, a cathedral drone.

The audience is, accompanied by dancing lights, offered the opportunity to move around and explore the space or to lie down and simply listen to the sounds.
  • Programme
    • 18.30 Circle Flute on Münster square
    • 19.18–19.70 Time Stretch
      Bernd Alois Zimmermann: «Tratto I und II»
      Petrus Abelardus: «Epithalamica»
      Gerald Bennett (*1942): «Columba Nitens pour soprano et bande magnétique»
    • 20.10–22.15 Time Folds
      20.10 «Sons d’orgues»
      20.45 «Gesänge zum Nikolausfest und zu Weihnachten»
      21.00 Olivier Messiaen: «Fête des belles eaux» für sechs Ondes Martenot
      21.35 «Sons d’orgues et d’ondes»
      22.00 «Mariengesänge aus England und Polen»
    • 22.15 Time Islands
      Katharina Rosenberger: «Komposition für Orgel und Elektronik» (2018, UA)
    • 23.00 Time Folds
      «Gesänge zu Epiphanias»
    • 23.15 Time Islands
      Eliane Radigue: «L’île re-sonante»
    • 00.00 «Geisterstunde» with all participants
    • 01.00 «Lichterlöschen»
The ticket grants admission during the entire evening of «Nighttime». Admission at all times, including re-entry.

Dates

Nighttime
Time Stretch / Time Folds / Time Islands

08. 09 2018 / 18:30

Berner Münster