Carl Rütti: Verena, Die Quelle

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In 1993 the Swiss artist Maria Hafner painted a cycle called Verena, die Quelle (Verena, the Source); it was a kind of interpretation in pictures of the legend of Verena [a 4th-century holy woman, much revered in Switzerland].

Then she decided to enlarge her work about the impressive life of this fascinating woman by combining the three arts of poetry, painting, and music. The famous Swiss poet Silja Walter (sister Maria Hewdwig from the monastery of Fahr) wrote poems to the paintings.

Finally the music was written as a result of the text and pictures.Carl Rütti writes: ‘The paintings by Maria Hafner, from which the poems arose, inspired me especially for sounds and instrumentation.

I was incredibly lucky to find the ideal interpreters of these sounds in the Cambridge Voices and the six instrumentalists. The recording of Silja Walter reading her own poems herself makes the synthesis of the three arts complete.