Exil

Most of the works on this programme were written by composers who had to flee their homeland. Ivan Wyschnegradsky fled to Paris in 1920, where he wrote for a quarter-tone piano at a time when the slightest dissonance in Russia was considered a political provocation. Andrzej Panufnik left his native Poland in 1954. Alfred Schnittke settled in Hamburg in 1990, eight years before his death, after spending most of his life in the Soviet Union. Although Schubert never left Vienna, the pain and loneliness of his inner exile are palpable in his music. Finally, the Belgian violin virtuoso Eugène Ysaÿe emigrated because of the First World War and wrote the melancholic musical poem "Exile!" which was recorded here in 1917 in the United States. Is exile nothing more than pain and isolation or also a source of inspiration that expresses through music what words cannot say and serves as a last refuge? "Let us listen to what they have to say," suggests Patricia Kopatchinskaja, who is herself 'forever uprooted'. She is accompanied by cellist Thomas Kaufmann and her friends from Camerata Bern.