Walter Fähndrich :
Music For Rooms

Upon the initiative of the Kunsthalle Krems and the Lower Austria department for cultural affairs and art in public space the Swiss composer Walter Fähndrich created a sound space project for the castle moat at Dürnstein. The sound composition was installed in late May, 1998 and can be listened to every day in the hours of dusk. It commences at the very moment the sun sets and then continues for fifteen minutes, with slight variations to theme at every repetition. Yet it is not a concert performed in front of an audience, nor is it a sound installation enveloping and captivating visitors. It is pure sound, softly if at all conjuring up associations. It is very much how Fähndrich himself once described his work. "It is", he said, "comparable to dusk, which envelopes the objects we see, leaving us to guess, whether as we look at them and see them more distinctly, we are learning to recognize their structure or whether we are actually entering the world of imagination." Dusk covers the rocks, the trees, changing our view of them. And so does sound. Our hearing and feeling become different. Nature appears to us with new beauty.
(Roland Schöny)