My Illness is the Medicine I Need

In a magazine with reports on mental institutions, Thomas Larcher came across interviews with patients: 'These sentences are of a strong inner power, yet do not claim to convey an overall picture of these people. There rather appear snatches from their world like a stroboscope.' The soprano part in Larcher's composition attends to these texts in a very restraint, often introverted manner, but they continue to have an effect in the instrumental parts, like catalysts of seemingly disturbing processes. The world premiere with Juliane Banse, Christian Tetzlaff, Nikolaj Schneider and the composer on the piano took place at the renowned festival 'Spannungen' in the power station of Heimbach in 2002. Recently, a recording has been released by ECM New Series.