Samuel Beckett: Stirrings Still (ECM New Series 2801)

Samuel BeckettTrevor BačaStirrings Still Paul Griffiths narratorJACK QuartetChristopher Otto violinAustin Wulliman violinJohn Pickford Richards violaJay Campbell violoncelloRecorded 2023 and 2024, Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, LuganoEngineers: Michael Rast, Lara Persia, and Michael Hinreiner (mix)Cover photo: Rosemarie ClausenProduced by Manfred EicherRelease date: September 4, 2026 Completed in 1987 and first published the following year, Stirrings Still was Samuel Beckett’s last message in prose, a dispatch from that uncertain border where the voice survives even as the self begins to lose its outline. More monologue than story, it finds an unnamed man whose passage may lead through a vast wheatfield drained into black and white, or deeper into the stumbling grain of memory itself. The distinction gradually ceases to matter. Life and what lies beyond become double exposures on the same strip of film, each haunting the other with the possibility that consciousness is merely the…