Fabio Nieder‘s Oberton-Elegie was premiered within our “Corona-compliant” summer series Concertini and recorded for our Lockdown Tapes by Hannah Weirich and Carl Rosman.

Fabio Nieder writes about his elegy:

My Oberton-Elegie for pizzicato violin and mouth harp was composed for the birthday of Joël Bons, the composer and artistic director of the Nieuw Ensemble and Atlas Ensemble from Amsterdam.

Here the violin renounces its arsenal of playing possibilities and makes itself small to resemble the mouth harp, almost becoming a mouth harp. The mouth harp on the other hand plays the bows of its overtone melodies with the nobility of a violin. One instrument is like the continuation of the other, and the two instruments together form a new being that almost speaks a foreign language that vibrates spectrally in the air.

Fabio Nieder, August 2020