David went through all of Schubert’s lieder and and took every instance where the character of death speaks to the living. He trimmed all the pieces of text together to make the lyrics for death speaks. Death becomes a tangible character in this haunting work and his words are strangely uplifting.

Finding an image that would be sensitive to the story of this work was a great challenge – when I finally came across the image I used on the cover (a crop from a larger image found in the archives of the Library of Congress) I immediately recognised the qualities of tenderness and modesty that are present in David’s work (plus a strong reference to Death and the Maiden). The composer never dictates to the listener how they should feel about death – and the pictures had to have this same open quality.
Inside the CD are two other images – one by Brian Arnold of a snowy path at night and the other of a house on a path that splits in two. An ambiguous journey, a memory – I wanted to find images that are mysterious, open and emotionally charged.

“The sonic river of Per Nørgård’s music. Flowing through symphony, flowing through song, and flowing now in four buckling tributaries down the back of singer Helene Gjerris. The cover artwork was a surprise, and yet not a surprise: the rare appearance on a Dacapo sleeve of a photographed human form, yet still the stamp of the label’s exquisite ‘look’ – its economy of colour and tone, its integration of text, and most of all its uncanny two-dimensional echoing of the music frozen inside the plastic box.”

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