Lisa Streich studied composition and organ in Berlin, Stockholm, Salzburg, Paris, and Cologne with Johannes Schöllhorn, Adriana Hölszky, and Mauro Lanza. She also participated in masterclasses with Chaya Czernowin, Hanspeter Kyburz, and Beat Furrer. Over 2011 to 2012, she completed the Cursus program for composition and computer music at IRCAM. She is currently a research fellow at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo under the supervision of Helmut Lachenmann.

Streich’s compositions use motorized instruments of her own invention. For example, small motors and thin strips of paper vibrate the strings of a cello in Pietà and Sai Ballare? and are used to pluck and stroke the piano strings in Laster and Safran. The idea came to her in her year at IRCAM, during which she observed the motorized sculptures in the Stravinsky Fountain designed by Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely. One of the ideas behind her approach is to challenge the conception of the machine as a brute force, by using machines in refined musical creations.

In general, Streich’s works deal in contrasts, imperfections, and irregularities. These contrasts are manifested in juxtapositions between, on the one hand, calm passages with fragile timbres, and, on the other, violent outbursts, such as the whip-like blows produced by the percussionists in Segel or the mounting volume that reaches almost the point of screaming in Rememory, a piece inspired by the novel Beloved by Toni Morrison. Sai Ballare? takes as its starting point the dance of two soldiers against the backdrop of the atrocious acts in Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Violence is a theme throughout the composer’s work, which explores “the idea of pain with almost physical harshness, as an existential human experience without any protective cover.”¹ Streich gives attention as well to the banal and everyday, but balanced by a metaphysical dimension rooted in Christian thought. The latter inspires vocal works that use texts taken notably from the Old and New Testaments (as in …mit brennendem Öle) or contain themes related to verticality, the sky, or heaven (Himmel, Flügel, Segel, Vogel. Mehr Vogel (Als Engel)) and religion (Pietà, Crèche, Agnel, Stabat, Seraph). The idea of Christ-like sacrifice is also present, visually translated into instruments gently whipped by motors.

Streich has received commissions from the Lucerne Festival, the Kölner Philharmonie, the Swedish Radio Choir, and the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, among others. Her works have been performed by the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Norrköping Symphony Orchestra, Quatuor Diotima, ensemble recherche, Ensemble Musikfabrik, and Malmö Symphony Orchestra on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music.

Streich has received numerous outstanding prizes and fellowships, including a fellowship from the Cité des arts Paris, the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation Orchestra Prize, the Berlin Academy of Arts Busoni Composition Prize, the Bernd Alois Zimmermann Prize, the Villa Massimo’s Rome Prize, the Ernst von Siemens Foundation Composer Prize, the Lilla Christ Johnson Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, and the Heidelberg Women Artists’ Prize. In 2017–2018, she was artist-in-residence with the ensemble recherche in Freiburg. Two CD portraits are dedicated to her: one by WERGO from 2018 and one the following year by KAIROS. Her works are published by Ricordi.

^{1. “Zwingende Dramaturgie, unerbittliche Spannung,” Neue Musikzeitung, May 2022. ↩}