Salvatore Sciarrino’s music hypnotises. Instead of resulting from laborious acts of composition, it often seems to have been captured in the here and now as an echo of hidden mystery plays. At other times one has the impression of witnessing volcanic experiments, with a threatening bubbling that recalls the sound of water and fire meeting, solid and ethereal elements mingling in telluric depths. Any performer seeking to do justice to such music must have some grasp of the magician’s art.
 
Salvatore Sciarrino, born in Palermo in 1947, engaged with the visual arts from early childhood and began painting at the age of four. At the age of twelve he took composition lessons with Antonio Titone, gaining further impulses through tuition from Turi Belfiore and Franco Evangelisti. From 1966 until 1969 he studied music history at the University of Palermo, then he relocated to Rome, where he attended Evangelisti’s electronic music course at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia.

Sciarrino has received numerous prizes for his work, including Premio Luigi Dallapiccola, Premio Gaspar Cassadò, Premio Abaiati, Premio Italia Radiotre, Musikpreis Salzburg and the Premio Fundación BBVA Fronteras del Cono­cimiento (2011). Salvatore Sciarrino lives in Città di Castello, in Umbria (Italy).
 
Florian Hoelscher studied with Robert Levin, Michel Béroff and Pierre-Laurent Aimard in Freiburg, Paris and Cologne, and also received important tuition from Peter Eötvös. After success in several competitions, his career developed as a soloist and chamber musician in Europe and the USA. He is a founding member of the Stuttgart ensemble 'Ascolta', with whom he has appeared at all the major festivals for New Music.