We hope to see you at 2nd edition of the Nostalgia Festival
between 5 and 10 October 2009.
Two years ago, on initiating NOSTALGIA FESTIVAL in Poznan, nothing was known but just one thing: the festival should be held in Autumn, only in Autumn, when the feeling of nostalgia is multiplied by the aura, by the season of the year. And additionally accentuated by music.
The first edition of the festival touched the nostalgia for the music of the East: the music of Georges Gurdijeff, Arvo Pärt, Alfred Schnittke or the music of films by Andrei Tarkovsky. His film, Nostalgia, opened the first festival, this time it will do the same - nostalgia is always return, though never repetition.
Nostalgia is also longing for the unattained, the impossible. It is a constant call that gets revived despite having achieved the aim or reached the goal.
The second edition of NOSTALGIA FESTIVAL in Poznan will have two main characters. Two shades of nostalgia.
The first is the music of Valentin Silvestrov, Ukrainian composer born in 1937 in Kiev, one of the most significant figures of contemporary European music. He is considered to be neoclassicist and modernist. He himself says that: "I do not write new music. My music is a response of and an echo of what already exists".
The second character is Gesualdo da Venosa, Prince of Venosa of the turn of the 17th century, great Italian composer and mysterious murderer. Don Carlo Gesualdo killed his wife and her lover in jealous rage. In bed. He is famous for his intensely expressive madrigals, and also for sacral music. In Poznan, in the interpretation of The Hilliard Ensemble, we will be able to hear the greatest sacral composition by Gesualdo: Tenebrae Responsoria, dedicated to the last moments of the life of Christ. We will also be able to savour Salvatore Sciarrino's variation on Gesualdo's life and murders, Luci mie traditrici, one of the greatest modern operas, composed in 1998.
The music of Silvestrov longs for the lost country; that of Gesualdo for innocence; and the music of Sciarrino for silence. Nostalgia has more than one colour and more than one sound.