Poetry is Life

Poetry Is Life – “A Thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever”: The Romantics in Word and Music was Programme II of the Rudolf Kempe Society’s 2017 Songs of Apollo season, devised by Cordula Kempe. In the Society’s annual programme of RSC and National Theatre actors reading their favourite poetry, eight actors read the Romantic poets, interwoven with music by Schubert for string quartet and for piano. It took place on Sunday 5 March 2017 at 7.30 pm at the Kempe Studio at The Muses, 58 Waterside, Stratford-upon-Avon. It was given in aid of the Rudolf Kempe Society International Young Artists Platform.

Performers

• Eight actors of the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company
• Bergonzi Quartet – Cordula Kempe, Barbara O’Reilly (violins), Robin Del Mar (viola), Jenny Curtis (cello)
• Zubin Varla – actor and pianist

Programme

• Franz Schubert – well-known and lesser-known pieces for string quartet and for piano
• Poetry by John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Blake, Heinrich Heine, Leigh Hunt and others, chosen by the readers

About the programme

Poetry Is Life took its name from an anonymous 20th-century Russian poet. In 2017 it was in its eleventh year. Unlike other programmes, where the actors read what had been devised for them, here they chose their own poetry on a given theme – and all gave their services in recognition of the Society’s work. The subject of Romanticism, in its historical and literary sense, offered new insights into “the lives, concerns and passions of these great visionary minds”.

A talk-back session about the programme with some of its performers followed on Monday 6 March 2017 at 11.30 am at the Kempe Studio, open to all concert-goers.