Musica dal Cielo – Music from Heaven | Vilde Frang III

Vilde Frang— Artist in Residence at classicAscona 2026—is distinguished by a fragile, almost ethereal sensuality in her musical expression. For this Norwegian artist, the supernatural blends uniquely with the reality of the finite. For her extraordinary “Music of the Heavens” program, Vilde Frang has invited the most exciting artistic personalities of our time to Ascona.

The musical spectrum ranges from archaic rhythms to profound reflections on life and transience. The program opens with Gérard Grisey’s “Stèle”: Two drums create an unforgettable sonic experience that makes time stand still. In “Reminiscence,” Toshio Hosokawa uses the marimba to create an atmosphere that, in keeping with the principles of Zen Buddhism, rises between silence and sound. Hosokawa weaves delicate, Far Eastern threads of sound that echo in the silence. In“…oder soll es Tod bedeuten,” Mendelssohn’s songs based on texts by Heinrich Heine merge with instrumental intermezzos by Aribert Reimann to form a new, fragile whole. Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 15 ( 1971) is performed in an arrangement for piano trio and percussion duo. This late symphonic work is full of quotations ranging from Rossini to Wagner—and as part of Shostakovich’s legacy, it even includes several quotations from his own earlier works. The result is a playful work of remembrance with parodic elements and a rollercoaster of emotions oscillating between irony and farewell.