This work was composed at the request of Marianne Piketty and the Concert Idéal, and was conceived as part of a concert uniting the works of two visionary musicians separated by more than eight centuries: Hildegarde von Bingen and Karl Amadeus Hartmann.

The poetess and musician’s celestial vision is contrasted with the baleful outlook and dark premonitions of Hartmann, who wrote his "Funeral Concerto" in 1939 shortly after the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia.

Une Vision d’Hildegarde, in the form of an adagio for solo violin and strings, will act as a bridge between these two worlds – a mystical vision and a vision of hell. The work is carried from end to end by the melody of one of Hildegarde's most beautiful songs, O Vis Aeternitatis. But I also concealed an allusion to Hartmann through the choral passage " Vous qui êtes les combattants de Dieu” [“You who are the fighters of God"], quoted in the first movement of his concerto.

Philippe Hersant

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