To go to the extremes means accepting all consequences: Pain, exclusion, but also the opportunity to access spheres that are otherwise inaccessible. In extreme cases this will mean death – for instance for Czech resistance combatant Julius Fučík, whom Luigi Nono memorializes in „Composizione per orchestra Nr 1.” The music of Galina Ustwolskaja is radical to the point of self-sacrifice. She refused to comply with the instructions of social realism so consistently that she accepted the fate of only composing pieces that would end up in a drawer. In her 1st symphony, which highlights the fears and concerns of a child in the capitalist metropolis, she attempted a hopeless balancing act between ideology and truth. All of her conformity trials have been buried in the 3rd symphony.

Olivier Messiaen also turns pain into sound. In „Les offrandes oubliées” the groundbreaker of the post war avantgarde and fanatical Catholic reminds us of Christ’s sinfully forgotten  sacrifices. Once a pianist who played in salons, and later a priest in Askese, Franz Liszt chose a similarly contrasting format for his final symphonic poetry „Von der Wiege bis zum Grabe” (From the Cradle to the Grave), in which life and death confront each other directly. What appears to be a return to the cradle in the end, turns out to be a decisive farewell from traditional harmony – a boundary is crossed into a new era of music history.