That is my song that had to be — The white sheet by Antanas Škėma

Venue: Chamber - Excerpts from the novel The White Linen by Antanas Škėma and compositions by Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, Debussy, Čiurlionis, Bartók and Stravinsky

The white sheet — a novel of the century by the great Lithuanian writer Antanas Škėma. His life is marked by the catastrophes of the twentieth century. Born in 1910 in what is now Poland, grew up in Russia, he was part of the generation that wanted to build up the independent Lithuania between the World Wars. After participating in the uprising against the Soviet occupation, Škėma fled to Germany, where he was initially interned but was then able to emigrate to America. Since he was not allowed to be printed as an exile in Soviet Lithuania, his works only found their way to Lithuania with perestroika in the late 1980s and have since also been rediscovered in his home country.

“This book contains one of the most beautiful and painful love stories I know,” says Corinna Harfouch, who is now staging Škėma's novel together with Hideyo Harada in a moving word-music collage. Here, Škėma's intensive connection to music with works by Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, Debussy, Čiurlionis, Bartók and Stravinsky becomes a literary and musical experience.