45. Main Evening Concert

Songs of despair and songs of love

Thomas Larcher took texts from a magazine article, entitled ‘Madness/Follia’ combined with photo-reportage of psychiatric hospitals from around the world. The patients’ perspective on reality is reflected in haunting pictures and, for the most part, short, concise texts, excerpts from interviews with inmates, fragments with strong inner force, which do not claim to represent these people in their entirety. Rather they illuminate small corners of their world. ‘La Bonne Chanson’ comes from another world, the poet was Verlaine, the beloved was Mathilde, the songs range from youthful infatuation to an almost mystical union. Fauré wrote the nine songs for a singer he was courting: ‘I’ve never written anything as spontaneously as I did La Bonne Chanson. I may say, indeed I must, that I was helped by a similar degree of comprehension on the part of the singer who was to remain its most moving interpreter.’ After the interval, Attacca Quartet return with two famous quartets by Philip Glass and the World Premiere of a new quartet by Donnacha Dennehy.