Baudelaire & Piano (postponed until autumn 2021)

The 200th anniversary of the birth of French poet Charles Baudelaire falls in 2021. LitFestBergen is celebrating the occasion with a concert by artist and composer Susanna Wallumrød, who has set 10 poems to music from Baudelaire’s best-known work,  Les Fleurs du mal. 

The Baudelaire & Piano album is a solo release in the true sense of the word. With Susanna providing piano, vocals and whistling, the soundtrack with her soulful voice is stripped right down – accompanied only by a trancelike piano. We meet a sinister gallery of roles – witches, heathens, wolves, deviants, brutes, ghosts, vampires and evil spirits. The songs move between desire and ecstasy, angels and demons, tenderness and sadism.

Susanna received outstanding acclaim from critics both at home and abroad when the album appeared in September 2020. The Guardian praised her “luminous voice”, her “clarity”, her “strong melodies” and for “communicating wordless emotions” in the meeting between poetry and piano. For its part, Dagbladet called it “powerful and captivating”. Welcome to the concert.

Susanna – voice and piano

Ingar Hunskaar – sound