What makes this a DVD
to cherish is in fact the bonus: a complete
performance of Luigi Nono’s beautiful,
mysterious ...sofferte onde serene…,
played by its dedicatee, Maurizio Pollini.
It was recorded at the Mozarteum, Salzburg,
in August 1999. Pollini is playing from
a printed score, but the film starts
and ends with Nono’s manuscript. The
film thus conveys an intimate connection
between performer and composer, who
were close intimate friends. I don’t
know what was going on in Pollini’s
mind as he played those magnificent
reverberating deep chords, but his face
is uncommonly expressive. Almost the
last shot is Nono’s final marking "Giudecca,
1976". It brings us right back
to Nono, who wrote those words a quarter
of a century before.
The film is a tribute
to Nono, the human being as well as
composer. Nono loved Venice, home of
his ancestors. It exerted an invisible
presence throughout his music. As Abbado
says, "when he talked about Venice,
it was magical". The film explores
that mystery, a city that exists on
land and sea. Nono’s birthplace, and
the house in which he died, sits right
at the water’s edge. The sea laps over
flagstones, as if at any moment it will
encroach on land. . It’s as if the inhabitants
belong more to the sea than to firm
ground. Moreover, in long shots of the
horizon, the sea itself blends into
sky, as if in a seamless whole. It’s
an extraordinarily poetic image with
which to describe Nono’s music. His
music transcends boundaries, searching
for something beyond conventional form,
for something that can realign consciousness.
Of course, there are shots of gondolas
in canals, but this is not tourist stuff:
it is timeless, blending past and present.
Again, just as Nono wrote. His grounding
in ancient music was deep and instinctive.
The film takes us into the basilicas
where the young Nono would go to listen
to church music, not for religious reasons
per se, but to experience the sounds
of the past in the spaces for which
they were made. His interest in polyphony
runs like a thread through his later
work, both choral and otherwise. The
acoustic of the vast, cool churches
also taught him to appreciate that music
changes with different ambiences in
performance. Above all, it is the ambiguity
of sound, time and space that makes
his music compelling. "I don’t
look at the colour of the sea",
he says, "but I do hear the colour
of the water".
The relationship between
Nono, Abbado and Pollini was very close
indeed. Abbado and Pollini speak of
Nono as both musician and man. They
are also in a position to describe why
political relevance was important to
him. The 1960s was a time of upheaval
and revolution, especially in Italy
where fascist and Communist feelings
were still vivid. Nono worked with the
festivals at Reggio Emilia which attempted
to bring "high art" to the
proletariat, and to infuse art music
with a spirit of change and social consciousness.
Through film shot in the working class
suburb where he lived, we see how close
Nono was to ordinary people. The sounds
of the street are all around – workers
calling, the sound of wheels on cobblestones.
Nuria Nono is shown shopping at an open
air fish market for their daily meal.
Nono’s music may be abstract but he
was not a composer who lived in a vacuum.
His music was meant to touch the minds
and hearts of his listeners, to connect
to the "great dramas" of human
existence.
Abbado and Pollini
also talk about specific musical experiences.
For example, they discussed with him
the German poet Hölderlin, whose
idiosyncratic work opened new dimensions
of imagination. They dig out all they
could find out about him, for Nono was
fascinated by the idea of two voices
circulating and becoming a chorus. "Stupendous
!" says Abbado. Nono and his friends
also discuss the importance of silence
in modern music. Nono says "People
are afraid of silence, they don’t realise
that silence, on the contrary, means
something", or "I find silence
full of thoughts, sounds, ideas".
Abbado describes listening to Mahler
with Nono, and hearing in the silences
"circular music that slowly vanishes
into the distance". As Nono said,
"it is the inaudible and unheard
that does not fill space but rather
discovers it, uncovers it as if we too
can become part of the sound and will
resound it in ourselves". Like
so many modern composers, Nono felt
that intelligent listening opened new
dimensions of experience.
The film also has wonderful
passages in which Nuria Schoenberg Nono,
the composer’s devoted wife talks of
her husband and his ideas. Their relationship
was highly creative. They met at the
premiere of her father’s opera, Moses
und Aron. While Nono’s own style
was distinctive, the Schoenberg connection
was also integral to Nono’s development.
This is a DVD to be
recommended to anyone who wants to explore
Nono’s music, or understand the processes
that create a composer. It is sensitively
filmed by people who understand music
and musical intelligence, so can be
enjoyed even if purchased mainly for
the Pollini performance.
Anne Ozorio
TDK
EUROARTS DVWW-DOCNONO [76:00] 
