Double poetry – Audiobooks

The recordings of the audiobooks for Song and Windmills were done simultaneously as one project, under the title Double Poetry. The two books complement each other, so the goal was to achieve a similar relationship between the two recordings.

If Windmills is made up of micro-stories and thoughts about the everyday details of life, then Song introduces a timeless dimension about finding meaning and that, which is greater than man. The earthly dimension meets the spiritual dimension. Humor, love, the nostalgia of memories and optimism of Windmills is complemented by the meditative contemplations of Song.

 

 

From the formal point of view, the goal was to have two recordings that were about an hour long each, that shared a similar style both musically and in terms of direction and actors. It was apparent that not all of the poems would make it onto the recording, which is why Daniel Raus created a selection that was then tweaked. And because the idea for the song “Midnight Blues” came while the Windmills audiobook was being done, the publisher requested for the song to be completed and added to the CD.

From the point of view of the direction, various versions with multiple voices were considered, but eventually, to match the minimalist form of the poems, a simple version with just two voices, those of Viktor Preiss and Lukáš Hlavica, was chosen. They embody the natural contrast between two elements that continually appear in both Windmills and in Song. Childhood and adulthood, sadness and joy, longing and the vanity of the human plight, life and death, earth and heaven, man and God, hope and Sisyphean fate.

 

 

 

The actors were recorded under the direction of Lukáš Hlavica at Prague’s DAMU studios. Once they were completed, Hubert Bittman composed music. One of the happy decisions of the project was to accent the recording with the (beautiful) female voice that creates another informal point of contrast to the two male voices in the recording. The recordings took several months to complete, and there is a wide variety of musicians that played in them.

Hubert Bittman was also in charge of the post-production at BITT studios. During the final stages, it seemed that one of the background tracks had the potential to be made into its own song, which is how “Midnight Blues”, which is included at the end of the Windmills CD, came to be. When the audio recording ends, 12 seconds of silence follow, after which a wind gong sounds and “Midnight Blues” begins with the voice of Noemi Krieglerová, a recitation by Lukáš Hlavica and an impressive saxophone solo.

 

Double Poetry: Audiobooks Song and Windmills
Actors: Viktor Preiss and Lukáš Hlavica
Music and Post Production: Hubert Bittman
Direction: Lukáš Hlavica
Sound Master of Actors’ Recording: Jitka Kundrumová
Recording Studios: DAMU and BITT
Publisher: Porta Libri

 

  Trailer for Song - video in English and facebook (in Czech)

  Trailer for Windmills - video in English and facebook (in Czech)

  Sample (English subtitles) - an introduction to Windmills by Viktor Preiss. In Czech, it says:
 
ABOUT THE LENGTH OF LIFE
 
When I was small, I thought
I’d live a thousand years
because a thousand was
the biggest number I knew.
I wasn’t selfish, so I figured that
everyone I loved would live
a thousand years too.
Today, a thousand years
isn’t nearly enough
as even eternity
feels too short.