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Programme Note

This planet has seen many lifeforms emerge and vanish on its surface. Each of them has had a lifespan, long or short. A species can be marginal or totally dominant, and its extinction can be almost imperceptibly gradual or dramatically abrupt. Similarly, in human history, great and not so great ideas, good and evil, have appeared, disappeared, and reappeared in a bewildering, fascinating stream. One example is the highly refined and seemingly durable thoughts of art and philosophy, currently almost suffocating in the deluge of sewer water from the entertainment industry. The Earth is full of these patterns, like a midsummer's sky: the clouds emerge literally from thin air, grow, reshape and vanish, the fate of each of them impossible to predict for the spectator.