Postscriptum is a concise chamber work for mezzo-soprano, cello and piano. The publisher catalogue lists the work as 2009, for a duration of approximately five minutes, with the music text identified simply as vocalise.

Postscriptum has no literary libretto. The voice is used as a wordless instrument: a vocal presence rather than a bearer of text. No words are sung. The mezzo-soprano line functions as a vocalise, entering the chamber texture as breath, color, and memory.

In this format, the absence of text is not a lack of content but the central condition of the work: the voice speaks without language, as if after speech.

The title suggests an afterword, a thought added after the apparent end of a statement. Its atmosphere belongs to the intimate chamber space: quiet, reflective, nostalgic, and charged with the sense of something remembered rather than declared.

An afterthought: music that seems familiar and yet not quite heard before.

The publisher’s programme note describes the second half, marked “PPS,” as a dissolution of the melodic writing heard earlier, with spectral piano trills and slightly howling string glissandi. The piece is therefore not simply a lyrical miniature; it is a short form that allows its own material to become memory.

A recent recording appears on the Chandos album Russian Roots, performed by Katharina Konradi with members of Trio Gaspard: Vashti Mimosa Hunter, cello, and Nicholas Rimmer, piano. The Chandos listing places Postscriptum in G-sharp minor and gives the recorded track duration as 2:47.

The same programme also appeared in live performance: Nicholas Rimmer’s concert listing for 21 April 2023 at Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin includes Auerbach’s Postscriptum für Mezzosopran, Violoncello und Klavier with Katharina Konradi and Trio Gaspard.