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THINGS LIVED AND DREAMT
Immersive piano recital around Leoš Janáček and Josef Suk
2025
Things lived and dreamt is a transdisciplinary piano recital centered around Czech composers Leoš Janáček and Josef Suk.
The concert offers an immersive experience with fascinating Czech music: through image and sound, the concertgoer can leave the rational world for a moment and dive into an emotional world.The pianist is surrounded by a forest of flowing fabrics, on which abstract or dreamy video images are projected, shot specially for this project in Czechia.
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Severin von Eckardstein (piano)
Lise Bruyneel (scenography, live video)
Creation at Concertgebouw Brugge
Co-creation with Festival 20.21 Leuven
Amuz, Antwerp
2025
" The transdisciplinary piano recital Things lived & dreamt brings music and visual art together in a unique symbiosis. "
Klassiek Centraal
PROGRAMME
Leoš Janáček (1854-1928)
Sonata ‘1. X. 1905, From the Street’
On an overgrown path, Book I
Josef Suk (1874-1935)
Excerpts from
Summer Impressions, opus 22b
Things Lived and Dreamt, opus 30
What is truth, and what is dreaming?
This concert wanders along often-overgrown paths, making its way past suspicions and desires, premonitions and pain.
House visual artist Lise Bruyneel basked in the enigmatic glory of Moravia’s nature for weeks, listening to the rustlings in the woods, the humming over the grain fields, the water rippling down to the valley. From dawn to deep in the night, she surrendered to the slow shifts of the light, gradually coming to understand the soft soul of Leoš Janáček’s and Josef Suk’s piano music.
In this performance, her quest is depicted by a fragile set made of feather-light projection screens on which the tiniest sigh can be seen.
Pianist Severin von Eckardstein, winner of the Queen Elisabeth Competition in 2003 and an undisputed grand master of subtlety, caresses the keys of his instrument with the same finesse.
The whole is an intimate performance, full of emotion and vulnerable beauty.
Festival 20.21 Leuven
Stills from my screen during live performances.
" Lise Bruyneel created a visual counterpoint to the music, marked by slowness and evanescent colours, which resonate with the piano. "
Xavier Flament, L'Echo
BEHIND THE SCENES
video interviews with Olav Grondelaers for Festival 20.21 (in Dutch)
texts from Robin Steins (Amuz)
Images that don't overwhelm
"I want to present instrumental music in a contemporary way through video. I think that's important, because music allows us to take a step back from our rational view of the world, from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. It gives us access to a different consciousness that can bring beauty, poetry, comfort and gentleness. The challenge – which I have been tackling for about ten years now – is to create a visual language that does not simply offer ‘film with music’. I want to complement the music, to subtly enhance it. The images respond to the subtlety of the composition and offer visual support while listening. They help the listener to find space for their own interpretation and to experience emotions." For Lise Bruyneel, it is important that her images serve the music, that they do not visually overwhelm it. ‘As a cellist, I translated scores into notes using my body and my instrument. Now I translate scores into images using my feelings and other techniques, but the artistic process remains essentially the same.’ She explains this in the following video, made for the 20.21 festival:
A heart for Janáček
“I first heard Leoš Janáček’s piano and chamber music in the film The Unbearable Lightness of Being (from 1988, ed.), based on the novel by Milan Kundera,” says Bruyneel, “and I was immediately sold. Later, during my years at the Opéra de Paris, I got to know Janáček's operas and was once again impressed. His music is absolutely unique: it sounded modern at the beginning of the 20th century and still does today, without being dated. His music has something timeless and accessible about it. When I started thinking about my first own project three years ago, I wanted to start with Janáček's music.”
Images of places Janáček knew
"Janáček's music is empathetic and at the same time very unpredictable. The composer himself struggled with severe mood swings and incorporated this into his music as a statement, as it were: that an emotion is never one-sided, that other elements also play a role in every happy or sad moment in your life. Very typical of his music are the rhythmic motifs that suddenly break through the musical narrative. In the images I created and selected to accompany his music, I wanted to incorporate this multi-layeredness and I couldn't ignore those rhythmic motifs either. I filmed the images themselves in places that Janáček knew, such as Brno, where he grew up, the spa town of Luhačovice, which he often visited, and the Moravian landscapes."
Eleven-metre-high projection screens
Lise Bruyneel opted for projection screens measuring no less than eleven metres high, ensuring that her images are not merely projected pictures, but create a poetic world that supports the music. ‘The colours of the Czech landscapes during the different seasons, the parks, forests, hills and mist... they will fill the space, but the music comes first,’ concludes Lise Bruyneel.
With the support of
Flanders state of the arts
Czech Center Brussels
South Moravian Region
VisitCzechia