Christina Meissner - ISPARIZ: eine Vision (Gesänge der Hildegard von Bingen und neue Kompositionen) (2020)

"I wrote and sang songs and melodies to praise God and the saints without the instruction of a person, although I had never learned neumen and singing." With this statement Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) characterized himself as a self-taught artist in the field of music while at the same time emphasizing the importance that songs and melodies play in her spiritual thinking and acting. Sound and vision are closely linked to her, since she experienced her songs directly through audition, i.e. through (divine) inspiration, literally through breath.

Preserving this spirit - "Ispariz" means "spirit" - to carry it on and project it to the present day, inspired Christina Meißner in the conception of her ISPARIZ project. a vision for which she combined Hildegard von Bingen's chants specially arranged for the cello with contemporary music. The turn to these chants arose from the need for an antipole to the often highly complex contemporary music - an antipole which, however, can assert its independence and whose artistic content proves to be on a par.

“For me,” notes Christina Meißner, “it was and is a basic need to let older and new music come together as a soloist. I need this communication for my playing culture as well as for the soul, and I love to let the powers of one music meet those of the other in a concert and at the same time to overcome the separation of old and new in concert life to a certain extent. It is all music that can pull people under its spell, even though the time span is huge. "

All contemporary works in this project were commissioned by Christina Meißner, with the exception of the play by Sofia Gubaidulina that explicitly refers to Hildegard. The title "first recording", however, applies to all works on the double CD in their present form.