... The music erupts from inside the sound and develops a highly differentiated (and very dramatic!) multilayer structure. It is a kind of music closely related to the instrument; in "Viola IV", for instance, the sonor complexity results, among others, from continuously changing bow pressure, bow positions and speed of stroke. All these parameters are treated independently in most cases. Based on this idea, the possibilities of the instrument are exhausted with extreme or even stubborn consistency. The result is a music of piercing intensity and enormous inner richness: sound stands in the room as a sculpture.
Alfred Zimmerlin, Tages-Anzeiger, Zürich
... A great variety of sound nuances, a world of harmony and color changes, of overlappings and polyrhythmic structures is revealed to the audience. There seemed to be several musicians playing. ...
Georg Becker, Aachener Volkszeitung
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If you consider the viola as the mouse among string instruments, you should get to know the compositions of the Swiss citizen Walter Fähndrich. Using various techniques of bow stroke on different points, the viola player elicits the richest sound nuances from his instrument. He especially kindles a nearly incredible firework of overtones with long and powerful repetitions. Motif structures arise between them, disappearing as soon as you think you have recognized them. ...
Not only flutes seem to be heard in the flageolets. Sometimes the viola blares like a trumpet, chatters like a clarinet or produces the nasal sound of an oboe. At the end of the third piece, Fähndrich perfectly imitates the tone of an organ. Moreover, the expert for sound effects in rooms makes productive use of the reverberative conditions of the Blumenstein church in Switzerland, where his technically excellent compositions were recorded. ...
Thomas Zabka, SZENE Hamburg
... The brute singing of a viola arises, rich in overtones; beaten, plucked, struck, sul ponticello (close to the bridge) and sul tasto (on the finger board). Not only me, but also my dog and my cat were spellbound when listening to the sounds of the CD.
... A kind of music is developed which is in permanent motion, a music of endless flowing. There are no rests, no breaks. It could almost be called a boundless music; a music, however, which carries you away, wherever it goes.
Mario Scherrer, ZüriTip (Tages-Anzeiger)
... A viola was playing in a way it is hardly ever heard and its sound was as rich in nuances as could be. Walter Fähndrich, who has been a member of the board of directors of the Institut für Neue Musik in Darmstadt (Germany) for many years, used various bow and fingering techniques to elicit from his instrument flageolet sequences, polyrhythmic structures, most varying ostinato-like tone sequences and overtone arrangements, which can actually be produced in such complexity only by more than one musician.
Fähndrich, however, did it without anybody else’s help. He created multilayer sound paintings rich in colors and variety. This fantastic sound art was standing in the room like a sculpture. One could not believe one’s ears. The audience was filled with enthusiasm and Fähndrich expressed his gratitude with an encore.
Hartmut Sassenhausen, Westdeutsche Zeitung
Walter Fähndrich's sound lesson on the occasion of the Tagung der Deutschen Musikpsychologen (Conference of German Music Psychologists) in Münster (Germany)
... Fähndrich is likely to have given the researchers plenty of material to think about. The instrument he used for doing this was the viola.
He had positioned himself with his viola in the lobby in front of the statue "Schmerzensmann" (suffering man) by Gröninger. But not only the fact that he had explored the sonor possibilities of the austere viola for years justified the memory of Passion. At least the first piece of the evening seemed inspired by the representation of Christ in agony. Fähndrich grouped flageolet sighs, lamenting motif scraps, around an oppressively vibrating central tone, putting one next to the other like blocks.
Actually, the pieces are not entirely composed; not only because Fähndrich has not noted them, but also because the works can be adapted to the room and the performance. Their rough structure is easy to follow, refinement prevails in detail.
Now the interpreter interweaves overtones generated as if by magic, now he twitters through the high registers. His technique of playing was amazingly virtuoso, his composition always economical.
The fact that in spite of the severeness and frugality of the performance lasting almost one and a half hours, people did not get bored, was probably the trickiest question for the present hearing experts. The reason for this may be that this minimalist never waded in the often shallow waters of minimal music. Long applause was the reward for a lesson which was fascinating in every respect.
Stefan Walter, Münstersche Zeitung
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Two soft pieces for a single instrument in a small room – a trifle, a "little piece of chamber music" in its true sense? The room in the house at Höchster Schlossplatz number 1 is indeed small, and Walter Fähndrich does indeed play "Erinnerungen an Viola I" ("Memories of Viola I") and "Viola II" very softly – so softly that the listener's ear can hardly make a distinction between the noise coming in from the street and the sounds that Fähndrich produces on his viola. And as quickly as one learns to fade out the noise from the street (or begins to appreciate their harmony with the viola), it becomes clear that this music is not traditional chamber music.
... Each piece lasts 20 minutes, in one bow movement, with arpeggios over the strings and just one string being struck at a time in the second piece; it consists almost exclusively in flageolet play, with minimal finger movement on the viola's fingerboard. It is very close to noise; and you wonder if the dancing overtones are created by accident or in a planned way. They must be intended because there are rhythms, melodies, intensifications, structures that can be discerned; and suddenly one has the impression of hearing clear tones (maybe from wind instruments?), tries to continue to listen in that direction and finds oneself in a Bach suite, in India, with Morton Feldman or out in the nature. You are free to move in Fähndrich's music, it is an offer. It is extremely virtuoso and well positioned in the small room in the basement at Höchster Schlossplatz. What more can you possibly want?
Ulrike Voidel, Frankfurter Rundschau
Walter Fahndrich comes from Switzerland but musically lives beyond the edge of every known map. There is absolutely nothing conventional about the way he approaches the straightforward task of bowing his viola. You would think an hour of listening to one instrument might be a somewhat tedious and empty experience, but in Fahndrich’s virtuoso hands this unassuming member of the string family dazzles and stupefies all who dare to prejudge the viola as trivial or insignificant. His experimental approach to playing the viola has created sounds that seem almost electro-acoustic; we are beyond the cutting edge of technique here. Avant-garde noises flow with diaphanous ease, sometimes as a bubbling cascade of real notes tumbling and mixing with surreal harmonics, whilst at other times it seems as though we can’t possibly be in the company of a musician. Tracks 1, 3 and 4 in particular feel like we’re being taken on a midnight journey down into the secret parallel universe of insects dwelling in the woodland undergrowth, as if tiny microphones have somehow been placed amongst the scratching of legs, the clicking of mandibles and the scraping of wings against hairy thoraxes... with the unrelenting breakneck speed of the bow constantly assaulting the strings like clouds of killer hornets. But nothing compares to the vibrant and violent dawn chorus of track 2. For 24 breath-defying minutes Fahndrich plays an inconceivable number of notes, surely in excess of a million, generating a brilliant white heat that implausibly crafts a silk-smooth textile from a giant coil of jagged thread. This hour is simply one of the most exhausting, but most enervating, solo instrument masterclasses available on cd. An experience that will humble the most accomplished musicians, and will leave amateurs foaming for more...
MusicalSense