‘John Malkovich’

In his novel On Heroes and Tombs (1961), the Argentine author Ernesto Sabato presents Fernando’s paranoid vision of a world governed by the blind. The main protagonist expresses his excruciating fear of the unknown, of absolute control and the terror of being discovered and condemned one day. This dark universe is very similar to the context of oppression in which the German-Russian composer Alfred Schnittke lived and whose work was denounced as immoral by the Soviet newspaper Pravda. The dissonance and expressive depth of his Concerto for Piano and Strings provides a perfect counterpoint to the “Report on the Blind”, a chapter from Ernesto Sabato’s novel. The world-famous American actor John Malkovich will read this dark dissertation as part of a sublime choreography of the spoken word and music, performing with the superb Russian pianist, Anastasya Terenkova who will interpret Schnittke’s concert.