Finite Infinity

The NFM Wrocław Philharmonic will once again turn to the music of the last years of the 20th century. This time, the artists will present Aribert Reimann's symphonic cycle of songs titled Finite Infinity to the words of Emily Dickinson. The soprano part will be performed by Marisol Montalvo and directed by Gábor Káli. An unforgettable evening full of poetic and musical impressions is being prepared. Are the forces of artistic imagination capable of capturing the title paradox?

Aribert Reimann, who died in 2024, was originally from Berlin and became famous primarily as a pianist specializing in song repertoire. During his career, he had the opportunity to collaborate with such masters of singing as Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. As a composer, he was mainly concerned with the vocal and instrumental repertoire, as evidenced by, among other things, nine opera works in the legacy of this artist. The song cycle with the Finite Infinity Orchestra sounded for the first time in Zurich in 1996. Reimann based it on seven extremely intriguing poems by the American poet, whom fame met only after her death. The narrative took on a compact form, executed by attaca.

Emily Dickinson in her hometown of Amherst, Massachusetts, lived in voluntary isolation, and few contemporaries knew about her work. Perhaps that is why her poetry revolves around the themes of death and loneliness. In the elaboration of the German pianist, orchestral voices once form indefinite clouds of sound, once they speak in resolute gestures. The expertly crafted accompaniment will murmur, sparkle, but also thrill with the force of a hurricane. The vocal part is extremely demanding — it includes complex rhythms and difficult intervals over the entire span of the scale, which promotes the expression of the artist's paradoxical thoughts. The central link of the cycle, on the other hand, is the elegy addressed to the lover.