Tomas Tranströmer
Tomas Tranströmer playing a left-hand piano piece. In 1990, a year after the publication of his tenth book of poems, he suffered a stroke, which deprived him of most of his speech and partly inhibited movement on his right-hand side. Swedish composers have since written several left-hand piano pieces especially for him to play. We filmed him (18 August 2011) at his home in Stockholm playing pieces by three other composers, Mompou, Glière and Fibich for one of our poetry films: he can't give readings now but he speaks through the piano, and we can edit his music with recordings of his poetry.
Tomas Tranströmer
Tomas Tranströmer playing a left-hand piano piece. In 1990, a year after the publication of his tenth book of poems, he suffered a stroke, which deprived him of most of his speech and partly inhibited movement on his right-hand side. Swedish composers have since written several left-hand piano pieces especially for him to play. We filmed him (18 August 2011) at his home in Stockholm playing pieces by three other composers, Mompou, Glière and Fibich for one of our poetry films: he can't give readings now but he speaks through the piano, and we can edit his music with recordings of his poetry.