The first movement, Incarnadine, is basically a love song. The word means blood-red, crimson, raw-flesh colour, the colour of life. The main part of the text is the observation of the lovers, as their loving words and endearments become flesh, literally. In a little postlude to this, written in italics, we hear the words of the coming child, who is now alive and unborn.

This is love's alchemy, mercurial,

What risk to bring another pair of hands into the world! A tongue alive with sounds

Of long-forgotten gardens, Babel

Songs which none can recognize,

Wildcat psalms in cedar trees, what risk!

Yet this new life is our elixir,

This soft dividing pearl is our great price.

Incarnadine, vermillion, crimson;

That night your words were made flesh I became

A hummingbird trapped in a scarlet room, 

whose wings beat so quickly they cannot be seen.

At the first performance of this piece a young couple rushed into their seats in front of me at the Royal Albert Hall with a few seconds to spare before the conductor raised his baton. They were harassed, unsettled and out of breath. They did not know what this piece was that was beginning. As they calmed themselves, and started to read their programme notes I noticed them following the text as the singers sang it. At a certain point I saw them grasp each other in an involuntary spasm of joint recognition. They gripped fast and would not let go. Something in Michael's text had touched their own situation. It was one of the most magical feelings I have ever experienced as an artist, attempting to communicate something of our shared humanity.

Over the years at subsequent performances I have got used to noticing people on my peripheral vision, hovering, sometimes alone, sometimes in couples, wanting to catch a quick word with me. They share intimate secrets of their love and their parenthood. Sometimes their tales are very sad, and one realises that those snatched moments of shared communion with complete strangers are vitally important, and one has to be ready with words and smiles. Sometimes they have questions for me too.