Hania Rani and the liberation of time

Without the clock, everything stops, and for Polish-born composer and pianist Hania Rani, who began her musical journey at the tender age of six, the nearly thirty years between then and now – and her most recent composition, Non-Fiction – have been vital.

Encountering music at a young age thanks to her architect father and doctor mother, Rani went on to study piano and composing while still learning to read and write – an important combination that led to music becoming so intrinsic to her nature: “I was in this very special school in Poland, we had a couple of those, they're for free, but you need to pass a test to get in."

While classical composition took up the bulk of her time in her formative years, as she grew up, she discovered and explored further genres – jazz, electronic music – which she would later study in Berlin. Once these roots took hold, they allowed her career to flourish, first with Biała Flaga, her 2015 collaborative outing with cellist Dobrawa Czocher, and then in 2019, her debut proper Esja, which fully immersed itself in the ambient, electronic space. The 2020 follow-up, Home, expanded this further with the addition of vocals and lyrics. In 2023, she released the Olafur Arnalds-featuring Ghosts, which evolved her foundations even further into the ambient and experimental with pop shadows, but it's only in recent years that her classical beginnings came back into play.

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Non-Fiction was initially commissioned by the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, after the discovery of compositions by Josima Feldschuh, a young girl living in the Warsaw Ghetto during WWII. Being Polish herself, Rani immediately found a connection to this piece. But, without wanting to create something that would feel more akin to presenting history at fact-based face-value, Rani sought to bring the personal side to life, particularly as war ravages Poland's neighbour, Ukraine, and Gaza remains on fire.

“I wanted to tell the story through the lens of who I am and what I'm observing," she tells me. "I really wanted the story to resonate differently, and use this coincidence and this commission to actually tune into modernity because I think this is something that interests me genuinely. There was so much going on as well, I think the proximity was different, and the way social media took over, it's no longer just media reporting from the war zones. We now have an access to the source of it, and I was interested immensely in that."

Rani describes the process of composing her first concerto as a chance to embrace the oft-forgotten liberation that classical music holds. Having had a rich education in the musical field, her understanding of its impositions helped Rani see the opportunities. “If you think about classical music, you feel like it's all limitations and it’s quite constrained and well behaved, but actually, it's quite free,” she explains. “Classical music was already so exploited, in a way, everything was already discovered, that gives you a lot of freedom because whatever you propose is nothing new, which is terrifying.... but also it's very liberating because there is no pressure.”

Combining her classical education with her more contemporary output – electronic, jazz, ambient, all umbrellaed under the term neo-classical – allowed Non-Fiction to come to life. The opportunity to marry them together is why her agreement to the piece was instantaneous. But the embracing of freedom also meant that she did have some split-second trepidations. “It wasn't anything totally new to me or totally unknown, which made it possible that I said yes immediately, I didn't even think twice,” she explains.

While she hadn't previously composed anything for a symphonic orchestra, Rani embraced the challenge. However, the initial performance at the POLIN museum in April 2023 didn't quite bring her ideas to life. She confesses, “We basically failed the test because I really didn't like this version.” Explaining that with this style of piece, composing on paper is one thing, but the reality is, “it's really difficult to precisely estimate how it will behave on stage.” But this opened up an opportunity for Rani to expand and finesse the piece into the version recorded at Abbey Road Studios, now available, which included removing the use of a symphony orchestra and instead recorded with the arts organisation Manchester Collective, expanded to a 45-piece orchestra, adding a third movement, and adding improvisational musician Jack Wyllie (Portico Quartet), and Valentina Magaletti.

With the crux of the piece coming from the discovered compositions of piano wunderkind Feldschuh, the element of childlike wonder at play wasn’t lost on the mid-30s Rani. “For me, it was a starting point, and helped me feel right about this project, because I found a common ground…obviously, she was way more talented than me when I was 10 years old,” Rani laughs. “She was this piano prodigy, you could read that she was giving performances in the ghetto, I couldn't do that when I was 10 years old! But what was striking about her compositions is that they were mostly influenced by composers I knew myself, Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, so there was a shared musical language. That's when I understood that there is actually way more in common than I assumed.”

Bringing Feldschuh to life, while the overall inclusion of the original material is minimal, the overarching impact is maximal. "I think we always need to find something personal and something physical in terms of finding your language, how to get into dialogue with this sort of history," Rani says. "There is a such a massive gap between all of us and her. If you think about from 1940s to now, it feels like 1000 years.”

To paraphrase the philosophical saying, as much as things stay the same, they also change. For instance, the imposing idea of war is eternal, reaching back millennia, but the changes in the musical landscape, while barbaric in their own way, do change, reflecting and refracting their surroundings. Something Rani has noticed is that acoustic arrangements are becoming a popular norm, particularly large ensembles or chamber music groups, as well as pop artists embracing the art of yesterday instead of leaning into the chaotically tech-infused norms of today.

“It's like a natural return to this sort of soundscape," she tells me, "and there are endless opportunities." It could be the pairing of instruments, or the change in tone with an open piano lid, or even the subtle nuances of a human being who may take a breath in a different place or be under the weather, altering their power and prowess: "There are many different aspects that are interesting just because they are unpredictable and you cannot tame them."

Mentioning Rosalia’s recent album, the release of LUX gave credence to Rani’s idea. “Maybe, I'm not the only one who's locking their gaze in this direction because it's an exciting environment,” she adds. There’s nothing more human than a big group of people coming together with their own finely tuned skills to breathe life into the notation of another, I suggest? “I crave that because it’s exceptional to be with other people in the room," she replies, "and everyone's different, everyone comes from a very different background, but in the end, we meet somewhere, we have this common space...when people synchronise, it's almost like a miracle."

The human element is what ties everything together: the discovery of notes written more than eighty years ago by a young girl, transformed and brought to life by an orchestra after being written by a peer who grew up with music surrounding her at a similar age, both separated only by time. But also the physiological reaction to these ideas.

Music, and more importantly, sound in general, are Rani’s bread and butter and she able to evoke and eviscerate in equal measure. During her academic days, she and her friends were subconsciously using music to establish their connections and relationships: “You use it to express your feelings, to express anything that you see or you feel or experience,” she says. Those feelings captured in the notes don’t come from “regular language,” as she puts it: “Language can translate feelings, translate states, and signify things, but for me, music is another layer.”

Music is an unknown quantity. It is, in essence, simply notes and timing but, beneath this surface, much more is at play. Having essentially grown up around it, Rani's outlook is unsurprisingly elaborate: “In music, it's like when you're in a laboratory, and you are looking at something through a magnifying lens, and you see that, for instance, this tiny piece of bread includes many, many different particles," she explains, which is why, when it comes to composing and listening, it's rare for another medium to come quite as close to the abstract idea of emotion and language as music.

"Music as an access point is very open, and it's a very inclusive space for everyone. You don't need much knowledge to enter it," Rani explains. "And I think this is brilliant, because it really depends on how this music is presented to you. Even the most complex music, if it's presented by the dearest person of yours, or you're maybe on some drugs or something, you can actually enjoy it without any knowledge or any context.”

Her education hasn't stopped. While not thinking of herself as a "professional composer" yet, this positioning means Rani's free to be curious and to enter those territories that are hitherto unexplored, as well as retaining a sense of obliviousness. "When you're a little bit oblivious to that and green, it gives you a certain amount of courage," she says, "which is necessary to complete any sort of bigger project. Although, it might be criticised at some point."

Time has shown that Rani’s methodology has paid off. While she had to go through a lot of unlearning and adjusting to these new enterprises – including a new piece she’s writing for the Barbican – she considers her growth relatively slow. But all slow burns often lead to the greatest rewards: “It started when I was six years old, so I don't know if someone wants to devote 20 years to land on a symphonic piece, but maybe,” she shrugs with a hearty laugh.

Rani is still a student in her eyes – as you should be on a never-ending quest to discover new feelings to stoke. “I never really studied composition, I actually learned it myself, and at some point, I was wondering, shall I go and learn this properly? But there is some nice innocence and excitement to making mistakes, which sometimes actually result in interesting bits, right?” She says, as she leads to the timeless questioning of everything: “I'm still wondering about that.”