Informal recording on the iPhone of an extract from Param Vir's
...BEYOND THE REACH OF THE WORLD ...
Jessica Kuhn: cello
Rie Watanabe: percussion
21 April 2016
Performance at ORF Broadcasting Station
Dornbirn, Austria
Work copyright (C) Param Vir, 2009
PROGRAMME NOTE
This work is inspired by the writings of Kim Malthe-Bruun (1923–1945), a Danish seaman who was active in the Resistance during the Second World War. His partisan activities led to his arrest by the Nazis, who subsequently tortured him and sentenced him to death. During his period of incarceration Kim kept up a remarkable diary in the form of smuggled letters to his family. These imaginative texts are full of courage, hope, and compassion.
Kim’s writings show his endless capacity for vision, and the immense inner resources he summoned to find a way to transcend his brutal experience. The text that inspired my composition was scribbled on paper in microscopic handwriting and only discovered when freedom fighters were clearing out the prison cells after the German capitulation. We know from the accounts of witnesses in the prison that this testimony must have been written in the aftermath of a particularly serious incident when he was brought back to his cell unconscious after having been tortured.
