'The gentle emerald sea softly lapped the shore... Tall, beautiful trees stood in all the glory of their green luxuriant foliage... and seemed to utter sweet words of love. The lush grass blazed with bright and fragrant flowers. Birds were flying in flocks through the air and... joyfully beat against me with their sweet fluttering wings. And at last I saw and came to know the people of this blessed earth... Children of the sun... how beautiful they were! It was an earth unstained by the Fall, inhabited by people who had not sinned and who lived in paradise.' A study in music and words of Dostoevsky's vision of a Golden Age.
Music for string sextet by Nigel Osborne - Bela Dekany and Maurice Brett (violins), John Coulling and Graham Scott (violas) Ross Pople and Martin Elmitt (Cellos)
Reader Ronald Pickup