Research shows that birds in the city sing louder than in nature. That finding could just as easily have been a note in one of Olivier Messiaen’s notebooks. For hours, he would lie stretched out in the grass, listening to their chirping. During long walks in the forest, he meticulously notated their melodies. Messiaen also wanted to capture the surrounding environment in sound—for instance, how the canopy carries sound depending on how dense or open it is. The spectral composer Tristan Murail once said: “Messiaen likes to ‘color in’ the passing of time.” In Oiseaux Exotiques, you can take that quite literally. According to Messiaen himself, he translates the bright colors of exotic birds from around the world into swirling rainbows of music.

In Talisker, premiered in Antwerp Central Station for Antwerp 93, it is the resonant architecture of the railway cathedral that inspired the composer. Ideally, Luc Brewaeys would have loved to hurl a metal trash can from the roof’s rafters to the ground—just to marvel at the prolonged echoes. Instead, five soloists, a percussion ensemble, and an extensive clarinet choir engage in a fascinating play with the acoustics of the concert space (including crashing cymbals). The resulting sound world is so rich that, as a listener, you’re sometimes unsure of what you’re actually hearing. The clarinets pick up the sound of the metal percussion instruments, and vice versa, stretching the echo further and making it more expansive. Brewaeys also invented new sound phenomena. As a spectralist, he colors his tones with so-called multiphonics, allowing the overtones of a sound to shimmer audibly. Unusual instruments like a whirly tube are no exception, nor are extended playing techniques. Brewaeys’ musical imagination seems inexhaustible. Perhaps the divine drink referenced in the title had something to do with it?

Chirping birds against a colorful sky, an exceptional glass of whisky—one thing and another leads us to Scotland. Composer Genevieve Murphy was born there. Not on the wild Isle of Skye (home of the smoky whisky Talisker), but on the east coast, in Dundee. Her brand-new work The Angel’s Share travels from the lowlands to the highlands, paying tribute along the way to the unspoiled natural beauty of her grandmother’s homeland. A 300-mile hike in five minutes for brass and percussion.

The Ragged Music Festival (the brainchild of the two young Russian pianists Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy) reaches a deeply affecting apotheosis with a star-studded performance of Olivier Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps. Messiaen composed this gripping plea for peace in a German prisoner-of-war camp, where he was interned in June 1940. The music of Alfred Schnittke and of Morton Feldman, master of silence, is likewise connected to death and to the inexorable passage of time in human life. HIIIT performs Schnittke’s Lebenslauf in collaboration with Kolesnikov.

Messiaen’s famous quartet is a religiously inspired vision in which an angel brings time to a standstill. But it is also a monument to life, resonating with imitations of birdsong and warm harmonies. That same warmth, and the underlying melancholy for all that makes the world beautiful, is also present in the wondrously consoling Andante from Schubert’s most famous piano trio. With Piano Phase, Rosas and choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker pay homage to the American minimalist Steve Reich.

During the First and Second World Wars, church bells were widely melted down into deadly weapons. Now that Europe is gradually being drawn into a new war on its own soil, HIIIT is reversing this process with Battles & Silences. In this project, battlefield weapon waste will serve as the foundation for a new series of instruments and compositions in the coming years.

In the spring of 2024, eight kilograms of Ukrainian bullet casings were melted down into bars in Kyiv, shipped, and then reforged in the Netherlands into a new resonant bell—marking the beginning of this reversal: turning destruction back into beauty. With Battles & Silences, HIIIT creates an alternative, immersive, and imaginary landscape that allows space to listen to this transformation and reflect on our urgent longing for peace.

Composer duo Poulson Sq. (Anthony Fiumara & Mathijs Leeuwis) confront the audience—together with two performers from HIIIT—with the pressing and ever-relevant reminder that peace is never a given. Through analog tape echoes and percussive interventions, the sounds of the 45-kilogram bell will compose a landscape of battles and silences.