‘Time is the substance of which we are made.’

- by Jorge Luis Borges

There is an illusion we all cling to: the idea that time is a straight line, that it has a beginning and an end, that it only flows in one direction. But music teaches us otherwise. Every sound is a return and a rebirth, every melody carries an echo of something that has already been, every improvisation projects the future into an instant that will never be repeated. Music dissolves time, expands it, suspends it, bends it. And this season is a journey into this fluid dimension, where past and present mingle, musical legacies transform and traditions reinvent themselves in new forms, without ever ceasing to dialogue with each other.

The beginning of the season is not a fixed point, but a spreading wave. Avishai Cohen and the Göteborgs Symfoniker open the doors of this exploration with an extraordinary triptych: a jazz trio reflecting the purest sense of improvisation, a symphony orchestra embodying the late Romantic tradition of Northern Europe, and then their meeting, a fusion that dissolves all boundaries between genres, between written and unwritten, between structure and freedom. It is an opening that does not impose a direction, but leaves all possibilities open.

Hence the season unfolds like a web of intersecting threads, creating correspondences and counterpoints between different eras, styles and sensibilities. Classical music, in its essence, is never static, and we are reminded of this by performers such as András Schiff, who brings the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment to the LAC stage for an immersion in the world of Haydn, between virtuosity and invention, rigour and creative audacity. Or like Philippe Herreweghe, who leads us on a journey from Beethoven's Eroica to Cherubini's Requiem, highlighting that tension between revolution and memory, between new and old, that has marked the history of European music.

One of the highlights is the recital by the young and charismatic Japanese pianist Hayato Sumino, known by the pseudonym “Cateen”. This event combines musical depth and contemporary energy. The programme combines classics such as Chopin and Bach with innovative original compositions by Cateen himself, creating a fascinating dialogue between past and present. The highlight of the recital will be the exceptional version of Ravel's Boléro, performed simultaneously on two pianos, a unique sound and visual experience that has already enchanted millions of online viewers.

And then there are those moments when music becomes a journey, a crossing of territories and cultures. Chineke! Orchestra brings with it the voices of the African-American symphonic tradition, giving back the right space to composers who have written extraordinary pages but who history has relegated to the margins. Camerata Bern builds a bridge between the ages with a programme that brings together Hildegard von Bingen and Benjamin Britten, in a dialogue between medieval sacred chant and orchestral modernity. The Manchester Collective mixes Scottish folk, jazz and contemporary writing, blurring the boundaries between orality and notation, improvisation and structure.

Jazz, in its most authentic essence, is the language that has most explored the concept of time in music, redefining it in every era. This season celebrates its vitality in different ways: Sollima and Fresu, with their alchemy of cello and trumpet, traverse it in a synthesis that touches upon the baroque and the contemporary, the scriptural and the free. Avishai Cohen takes it into the symphonic world, while Ledisi and the Metropole Orkest interweave it with the voice of Nina Simone, rewriting the pages of a historic concert with new arrangements.

Indeed, the human voice is the element that most dissolves time, the first musical instrument, the oldest and at the same time the most capable of renewal. Costanza Alegiani and Peppe Servillo's recital, dedicated to the songs of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, forcefully reminds us of this fact: Kabarett, musical theatre, jazz and poetry come together in a single tale that spans epochs and continents. Kurtág, the great master of the musical miniature, is another thread running through the season. The “Kurtág 100” concert, which falls exactly on the centenary of his birth, is an opportunity to explore his poetic world, suspended between sound and silence, memory and vision. But his essential and powerful language also appears in the Manchester Collective's programme, demonstrating how his influence continues to shape the present.

This season there are concerts that tell stories, but also projects that go beyond music in the narrow sense, exploring the relationship between sound, image and word. Rodari Connection brings to the stage an experience in which the narration of Fables on the Telephone mixes with electronic and video experimentation, creating a play between reality and imagination. WANDERER, with its artistic residency at LAC, transforms theatre into a sound and visual journey, breaking down the barriers between performance and installation. Andrea Molino's La radio vuota, co-produced with 900 presente, the Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana and RSI, is another example of how music can tell stories outside the traditional concert, creating an immersive experience that questions our relationship with sound and the world around us.

Finally, there are two events that seem to underline the heart of this season: the screening of Psycho, with the soundtrack performed live by the OSI, and Sinfonia di una grande città, in which Berlin-based DJs Gebrüder Teichmann perform live music for Walter Ruttmann's legendary silent film Sinfonia di una grande città (1927), remixing music by Berlin composers from various eras. In both cases, music takes control of cinematic time, transforms it, rewrites it. We watch the same images, but the experience is always new, always changing.

There are also occasions when historical time becomes the living matter of music. The concert “We were the sound”, on the occasion of Remembrance Day, is a tribute to the female musicians deported to the concentration camps, women who made music an act of resistance. History is also woven into Balagan's programme, a journey through Jewish, Balkan and contemporary sounds, tracing the wandering trajectories of migrant traditions.

That is why this season is not a mere concert programme, but a true experience of time. A journey that shows us how music is never an object of the past, but an energy that continues to transform. Borges wrote that time is a river, a tiger, a fire. Music is all this, yet it is also what allows us to cross it without being overwhelmed by it.

Let yourself be carried away. Every sound is a new beginning.

Andrea Amarante

Artistic Director Music

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