Vltava. - Textbote

A State of Recording.

In the 200th anniversary year of the birth of the Czech composer Bedřich Smetana, who created one of the most famous pieces of music about a river in the 19th century with his symphonic poem “Vltava”, La Pesch embarks on a three-week journey from the sources to the mouth of the river. What does the river really sound like? What has changed since Smetana’s time? Using various microphones, experimentation and accompanied by her dog, she exposes herself intensively to the river, explores its character, its landscapes, how she as a human being and her dog as an other-than-human being encounter the river and what states the sounds of the river put her in. She approaches Vltava with the template of Smetana’s work in her head, becomes one with the river and splits up.

The outcome is an hour-long river experience in surround sound that gently washes over the ears, ripples along observingly, floods the senses, takes everything with it, tears the ground from under the feet. In part, La Pesch translates musical structures from the original into field recordings, such as the merging of two source rivers into the main theme of the composition. In part, she contrasts the historical state of Vltava depicted by Smetana with ecological changes, such as in the chapter “St. Johann Rapids”, which today have given way to the Štěchovice Dam. She challenges the naturalistic and nationalistic idyll invoked by Smetana with disturbances.

She rubs up against the original, questions, compares, traverses, overcomes, finds anew and knocks over, cuts her way through the thicket, swims, dives, perceives, also observes her dog approaching the river and takes inventory with extended field recordings. She expands her recording techniques for environmental sounds to include the recording of her rhythmic, narrative, vocal and physical performative approaches to the river. Because every human approach to the river inevitably does not escape the human perspective. It thus becomes part of her composition. Between naturalistic field recordings and artistic interpretations, a multi-layered portrait emerges – Of the river? Of her? Of a state? The audience is left to answer the questions themselves after surfacing from the raging river.