Songs and preludes by Satie, Cage & Scriabin and a new setting of the poems of Otto Braun by Boris Bergmann
Performed by Caitríona O’Leary and Boris Bergmann

A sensitive and prodigious talent, Berlin poet Otto Braun (1897-1918) was 16 when the Great War broke out. His work is bathed in natural and classical imagery and presents an uneasy and explosive mixture of self-sacrificing war heroism and a childlike longing for love and connection. He died on the battlefield in 1918.
Berlin-based composer and pianist Boris Bergmann has set ten of Braun’s poems in a stunning and powerful new song cycle, “Taumelnd von Glut” (“Reeling in the Light”), for Irish singer Caitríona O’Leary.
To compliment these songs, Caitríona and Boris will perform works written in the years just before the world-engulfing war - cabaret songs by Erik Saite (1866-1925), full of drollery, gaiety and irony, and Boris will perform Alexander Scriabin’s (1872-1915) remarkable last composition, his Five Preludes, Op. 74. Also on the programme is Sonnekus2, a work from 1985 by John Cage (1912-1922) – a short song cycle for solo voice full of Cageian wit and mysticism and with instructions that it be performed alongside Satie’s cabaret songs.

Caitríona gratefully acknowledges the support of the Fingal County Council Arts Office and the European Union/Goethe Institute.