Guido Fischer:
Robert Schumann already knew to report: “Listen diligently to all folk songs; they are a treasure trove of the most beautiful melodies.” Today, on the other hand, folk songs seem to be of little inspiration to many contemporary composers. You are a great exception, Mr. Nieder. Where does your intense preoccupation with folk songs stem from?

Fabio Nieder:
First of all, I must note that the terms such as “folk song,” “folklore,” or “ethnic” always have something pejorative in themselves. But we often forget that “folk music” was the music of the majority for thousands of years! Finally, the most important characteristic of “folk music”, which fundamentally distinguishes it from serious music, was and is that it had no authors. It is a common property of a collectivity and not the expression of a single person.Many composers have been interested in folk music. Such as Janáček, Bartók, Kodály, and later Ligeti and Berio – although it is no coincidence that these composers were also strongly interested in linguistics. But today? Hardly anyone who plays in Donaueschingen or Witten shows any interest in these wonderful people and their music. Where does this disinterest come from? Is it a kind of snobbery? As a composer, I find it a major human task to make up for this omission. I want to give this music an importance equal to that of notated music. I want to try to pay off the debts of a colonialist mentality, so to speak. Not only for humanitarian reasons, but above all because of the beguiling beauty of its expression! And this is especially true of Slovak folk music….

Guido Fischer:
…which, after all, has always left deep traces in your creative work….

Fabio Nieder:
My great passion for peasant songs goes back to my early youth, when I lived in the countryside on the slope between the city of Trieste and the Karst above the city. The suburbs of Trieste and the Karst plain are Slovenian-speaking. The so-called Slovene minority has lived there since the 6th century AD. The Slovene villages around Trieste are mainly inhabited by peasants. And their music is very familiar to me. Then there is my close friendship with the composer, linguist and ethno-musicologist of Slovenian nationality from Trieste, Pavle Merkù. In the sixties and seventies he collected thousands of folk songs of the Slovene minorities living in Trieste, Gorizia and East Friuli. Through him, in the seventies, I also knew the lively musical life in neighboring Ljubljana. The national folk music of the respective former Yugoslav countries was very much cultivated during the period of Tito communism and also aroused the interest of local composers. Unfortunately, with the decline of the communist republic, the musical orientations of the composers there also diverged. However, I never lost interest in this world, in the Slovenian language and culture. On the contrary, this source of inspiration has nourished my musical production for decades.

Guido Fischer:
What do you have to pay special attention to when you deal with a folk song – like now? Possibly the folk song could lose some of its “original breath” if it is now woven into an artistic, “art-musical” context.

Fabio Nieder:
That is a very important point! The artistic folk song arrangements of Béla Bartók, for example, often transfer the original melodies of the peasants to a voice with piano accompaniment. But the original singing technique is completely lost. If you have the opportunity to listen to the original recording of a peasant folk song and then compare it with a Bartók arrangement, the difference is striking: the arranged song seems almost tamed! In my composition “Vielleicht weiß es die Nachtigall,” the singing voice uses, among other things, the vocal technique of a Slovakian folk singer, only to return to the conventional voice of a soprano in the course of the piece.

Guido Fischer:
…according to the score, she is supposed to sing with an “ethnic voice”

Fabio Nieder:
…exactly. It’s like a wandering between different ways of singing and the associations it brings. But with my very latest composition, which once again refers to Slovak folklore, I go a bit further and write exclusively for a real Slovak folk music singer who only knows and practices this singing technique. This is now a great challenge for me: two worlds meet! Also in the performance practice. But for a long time I have been researching an alternative way of singing. Unfortunately, the same kind is always taught in our universities – with only a few exceptions, such as overtone singing, which, by the way, I also want to include in this new work. The possibility of working with something authentic has a great fascination for me! My experience with the Atlas Ensemble in Amsterdam also went absolutely in this direction: at that time I was allowed to work with musicians from India, China, Japan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Iran and Iraq, Turkey and compose for their original instruments. However, my music will always be something different from a real folk song. It is rather a fantasy object. An act of free choice. Something that stands between the musical traditions of certain peoples and my personal intuition. In that sense, yes, the connection to tradition can be very interesting for me.

Guido Fischer:
What does the folk song “Vielleicht weiß es die Nachtigall” (Maybe the nightingale knows), which is now set to music, tell you about? Can you locate its roots more precisely? When might it have been written? In which dialect is it written? And: can you remember when you heard it for the first time?

Fabio Nieder:
The whole text of this Slovak folk song has five stanzas in total. I use only the first one for my composition, because I didn’t want to go into detail, but to stay on a generally existential terrain. The German translation is “Tell me, little nightingale, you beautiful creature, what is the greatest torment in the world?”

Guido Fischer:
Can the roots of the song be located more precisely?

Fabio Nieder:
The original song was notated by Frantisek Poloczek in 1950 in Slovakia, in the municipality of Moravské Lieskové, and then published. And Poloczek reports that most of the Slovak folk songs he collected in the fifties were very old. Which is why only the old people could remember them. Most of the singers, however, were women.

Guido Fischer:
In your huge catalog of works, there are always references back to other composers, such as Rameau and Schubert. But what role does Gustav Mahler play for you? It is true that you have performed Mahler as a song accompanist. But with his musical fusion of the sounds of nature with the sounds of art, he could well be a relative in spirit?

Fabio Nieder:
The spirit of Gustav Mahler has accompanied me since my early youth. He is a relative and a companion in life. His “like a sound of nature” has always accompanied my research as far as the connection between nature and music is concerned. Also his worldly signals, which always find a place in his symphonies, can be found in my music. He got to the heart of important things that always occupy me.

Guido Fischer:
Just as Mahler uses herd bells “in the far distance” in his 7th symphony, they also sound very softly now, towards the end of “Perhaps…”. Could one hear it as the evocation of a (paradisiacal) idyll that will never exist like this?

Fabio Nieder:
That always depends on the prior knowledge of the viewer. The herd bells as a nature-like instrument, are used again and again in the Central Slovakian folk music. The sheep and goat bells are almost a symbol of the shepherd music from Podpol’ane, a music played on the overtone flute fujara. A person familiar with the music of Gustav Mahler can hear in these bell sounds a clear allusion to the poetic world of his symphonies. A musician from Podpol’ane, however, who has no knowledge of European classical music, will certainly say: this is indeed a sound of our idyllic homeland! In this sense, one could say that this paradise really exists!

Some words about SAI BALLARE? by the journalist and author Egbert Hiller (the text in German only is taken with friendly permission from our programme booklet of Musikfabrik im WDR 67):

Lisa Streich folgt kompromisslos ihren schöpferischen Impulsen, die auch und gerade von spirituellen Dimensionen getragen werden. Auf der Suche nach Antworten auf brennende existenzielle Fragen bricht die 1985 geborene Schwedin immer wieder zu neuen Ufern auf. Sich auf Pier Paolo Pasolini einzulassen, war für sie eine besondere Herausforderung, zumal sie in Sai ballare? auf den radikalsten (und letzten) Film des italienischen Regisseurs Bezug nahm: „Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma“ („Die 120 Tage von Sodom“) von 1975, für den Ennio Morricone und Pasolini selbst den Soundtrack komponierten. Der Film beruht auf einer Vorlage des Marquis de Sade und ist zudem vom Inferno aus Dantes Divina Commedia (Göttliche Komödie) inspiriert. Verortet hat Pasolini sein „Sodom“ in der fiktiven Republik Salò, einem faschistischen Marionettenstaat in – von Nazi-Deutschland besetzten – Norditalien, in dem die Herrschenden an entführten Frauen und Männern ihre Triebe und Machtgelüste ausleben. Erniedrigung und wachsende Brutalität münden schließlich in Folter und Mord.

Lisa Streich fokussierte in Sai ballare? die Schlussszene des Films, in der vor dem Hintergrund des grausamen Geschehens zwei junge Wärter tanzen und Belanglosigkeiten austauschen. Der Titel ihres Stücks – auf Deutsch: „Weißt du, wie man tanzt?“ – geht darauf unmittelbar ein. Diese Worte mögen fast zynisch klingen, stellen aber eher die Frage nach Schuld oder Unschuld von Kunst und Musik, die, wie die Kulturgeschichte aufzeigt, für verschiedenste, auch verbrecherische Zwecke instrumentalisiert werden können und wurden.

Dem begegnet Lisa Streich mit dem spröden Charme ihres Klaviertrios, das den Tanz der imaginären Wärter ins Schattenhafte entrückt. Nur zwei der drei Instrumente werden von Menschenhand gespielt. Das „mechanische“ Cello produziert hingegen subtile Klänge, die von rotierenden, durch winzige Motoren angetriebene Papierschnipsel und Plastikfolien auf dem Korpus des Instruments erzeugt werden. Die Perversion menschlichen Handelns in Pasolinis Film konfrontiert Streich mit der Traumsphäre ihrer mikrotonal aufgefächerten und überwiegend zarten, nur punktuell sich sachte aufbäumenden Musik, mit der sie, wie sie es formuliert, „die Schluchten zwischen Hässlichkeit und Schönheit mit Liebe füllen“ möchte. Mithin reflektiert Sai ballare? utopische Vorstellungen. Lisa Streich will mit ihren Klängen „berühren“; intuitiv spürt sie Visionen von einer besseren Welt nach, ohne die Wirklichkeit auszublenden. „Weißt du, wie man tanzt?“ heißt in diesem Zusammenhang auch: Weißt du, wie man lebt, wie du leben willst, was du tun kannst, um dich selbst und andere zu „beseelen“ oder immerhin – nicht zuletzt in und durch Musik – ein wenig glücklicher zu machen?