SWR/Arte

Luigi Nono – The Sound of Utopia

The life of composer Luigi Nono is the story of a passionate fighter for a better world and a tireless seeker of new sound possibilities. As the son-in-law of Arnold Schönberg, he established himself as the spearhead of the avant-garde after the Second World War, whose concerts regularly caused scandals and triumphs. Like many Italian intellectuals at the time, Nono was also a passionate communist; he supported the construction of the Berlin Wall and travelled to the GDR, the Soviet Union and communist countries in South America.

After his attempt to combine serial music with politics fails, he realises that he has reached a dead end both politically and artistically. Nono completely reinvents himself. In the experimental studio of the Heinrich Strobel Foundation in Freiburg, he created live electronic works whose technical achievements and inward-looking aesthetic continue to exert an enormous influence on contemporary composers to this day.

With: Helmut Lachenmann, Nuria Schoenberg-Nono, Angela Ida de Benedictis, Ingo Metzmacher, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, and others.

First broadcast: 15 September 2024 at 23:10 on ARTE