“Enough had. City rumblings, evenings,
and under the sun, and always …
Taking off into fresh affections and the latest buzz!”
—Arthur Rimbaud, Illuminations

The Kammerakademie Potsdam and its musical director, Antonello Manacorda, heed Arthur Rimbaud’s appeal to leave behind the noisy machinery of urban life and civilization to listen for new soundscapes in nature: Benjamin Britten’s settings of selected poems from Rimbaud’s Illuminations, performed by soprano Anna Prohaska, are framed by Toshio Hosokawa’s Blossoming II, which was inspired by the life cycle of the lotus flower, and Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony.