I thought some of you Berlin fans in the US might enjoy knowing about this:
[quote]Music of the Weimar Republic --
And More -- at This Festival
By BARRYMORE LAURENCE SCHERER
November 14, 2007; Page D16
NEW YORK -- Berlin, rebuilding and redefining itself as Europe's most dazzling capital, is the nominal centerpiece of
Carnegie Hall's "Berlin in Lights" festival, which continues through Sunday. And those festival lights have shone all over the arts map, with events ranging from programs of Mahler and contemporary symphonists by the Berlin Philharmonic under its music director, Sir Simon Rattle, to film screenings, multimedia exhibitions and panel discussions on Berlin's literati and contemporary visual arts.
In an article in the festival program, Clive Gillinson, Carnegie Hall's executive and artistic director, and guiding force behind "Berlin in Lights," observed that "programming of this kind . . . is not about forgetting the past; it's about making the past help drive the future." Three festival concerts I attended seemed to illustrate this premise -- at least in theory.
The dashing Max Raabe and the Palast Orchester opened the 'Berlin in Lights' festival.
First was the scintillating opener, Max Raabe and the Palast Orchester in a characteristic program of film, dance and cabaret music of the Weimar Republic. As a performer Mr. Raabe is panache incarnate, his hair brilliantined to a polish that P.G. Wodehouse would admire, his tuxedo immaculately tailored, his wing collars and shirtfronts magnificently starched (no wash-and-wear formal togs for this gent). Delivering a running commentary laced with irony and innuendo, and singing in a voice ranging from dusky baritone to sweet tenor croon, Mr. Raabe re-created, along with his versatile band, an evening of classic numbers that suggested the trans-Atlantic give-and-take between American and Austro-German songwriters when Art Deco was the last word.
Whether delivering Mischa Spolianski's sultry "Heute Nacht Oder Nie" ("Tonight or Never"), Nacio Herb Brown's "Singin' in the Rain" (in the original dance-band arrangement from long before Gene Kelly flapped his umbrella around it) or such a comic novelty song as Walter Jurmann and Bronislaw Caper's "Mein Gorilla Hat ein Villa im Zoo," the musicians had this infectious, sometimes hysterical style down pat. From Kurt Weill's cynical "Alabama Song" to Robert Stolz's "Du Bist Mein Greta Garbo," they played not only with perfect phrasing and color but with authentic articulation of the irresistible rhythms. If light music seeks its "original instrument" group, this is it. Indeed, so complete was the evocative power of this ensemble's music that we seemed transported back in time to the ballroom of Berlin's Hotel Adlon -- or was it the first-class dining room of the Cunard liner Berengaria (ex-Imperator of the Hamburg America Line)? Those were the days.
The musical atmosphere darkened considerably a few nights later when Zankel Hall played host to the celebrated composer, conductor and chansonier H.K. Gruber, singing and conducting a program of songs and instrumental music by Kurt Weill (1900-50) and Hanns Eisler (1898-1962) that revealed the other side of the social coin.
Weill, of course, is best known for his 1929 musical satire "The Threepenny Opera," a modernization by Bertolt Brecht of John Gay's 1728 English satire, "The Beggar's Opera." A pupil of the formidable pianist, music theorist and composer Feruccio Busoni, he later migrated from Berlin to New York, where he became a masterly composer of such Broadway successes as "Knickerbocker Holiday" and "One Touch of Venus" before his sudden death. His "Street Scene" won the first Tony Award for best score in 1947.
Eisler, a pupil of Arnold Schoenberg, also hooked up with Brecht in the 1920s, collaborating on songs and theater works that viewed life from the perspective of Berlin's working poor and demimonde. Fleeing Nazi Germany in 1933, Eisler went from Moscow to the U.S., where his communist sympathies eventually got him blacklisted in Hollywood and subsequently deported in 1948, despite the support of such friends as Charlie Chaplin and Aaron Copland. Back in East Berlin, he continued to write film and theater music as well as cabaret songs and the East German national anthem. Nevertheless, with age he began to drift away from rigid communist politicos and suffered increasingly from depression.
The evening's repertoire, all composed between 1926 and 1931, was entirely contemporaneous with that of Mr. Raabe, but instead of bubbling with suave irony and humor, these protest songs exploded with bitter cynicism and anger. Weill's 1928 "Berlin im Licht" (doubtless the inspiration for the festival's title) set the tone of the evening, its text, by the composer, asserting that sunlight isn't enough to see what really goes on in Weimar Berlin -- you need wattage. "Just shut up and let's have some light," the song declares. Weill's "Mussel From Margate" (from "Oil Music") starts off like an old British music-hall number about a Margate vendor of painted shells. But before long, the refrain of "Shell, Shell, Shell" takes on a chilling, prophetic note, as the text changes to a denunciation of the international petroleum industry -- particularly resonant today.
Like Weill's songs, Eisler's "Ballad of Good Deeds," "Storm Trooper's Song" and "Welfare Song" declaim truth, denounce wrong, and exhort listeners to action in an idiom of infectious march, waltz and tango rhythms and catchy refrains. Indeed, the succession of numbers increasingly emphasized the similarity between Eisler's music in this genre and Weill's. They often seem to write with the same pen.
Mr. Gruber, rumpled and bespectacled, is a genuinely endearing concert figure, like a favorite professor flipping through his sheet music (occasionally dropping a page) and linking his numbers together with a lively commentary that mingled vivid history with personal anecdotes. Rolling his gutteral Prussian R's with gusto, he sang in an indescribable blend of nasality and hypertensive stridency. But, if truth be told, the delivery became wearisome by the second half; the final work, Weill's nonvocal "Threepenny Opera" suite, "Kleine Dreigroschenmusik für Orchester," came as a genuine balm for these ears. It was certainly well played under Mr. Gruber's direction by the Zankel Band.
Mr Gillinson's image of "the past helping to drive the future" was also in my mind during a very long Zankel Hall program of relatively modern works by the 11-member ensemble KNM Berlin. Formed in the late 1980s by a group of students of the Hanns Eisler College of Music in then-East Berlin, KNM (which stands, in German, for Berlin New Music Ensemble) devotes itself to music-theater pieces as well as experimental music -- which means "anything goes."
Nearly all the composers represented were born between the late 1950s and the mid-1970s, which places most firmly in middle age. And a succession of works variously featuring the pleasant clicks of a bicycle wheel; prerecorded waves of massed speaking voices; paired violins playing octaves in quartertones; megaphones muted with toilet plungers; a video of street scenery; a solo tuba in one work and a solo double-bass bassoon in another -- each playing high tones, low tones, breath tones and mechanical noises of the instrument that were electronically doodled with -- grew old fast. In fact, despite the festival literature acclaiming KNM as a "cutting edge" group, most of these experiments recalled work done decades ago by John Cage, Charles Wourinen, Morton Feldman and George Crumb.
Nevertheless, if the cutting edge often sounded like it needed some honing, two works truly stood out.
In selections from his continuing series "Voices and Piano" (1998-2007), composer Peter Ablinger (b. 1959) took recorded speeches by Brecht, Schoenberg, Angela Davis and Mao Zedong and created piano accompaniments that closely follow the verbal pitches and cadences of the spoken words. The result was sparkling, vivacious keyboard music that recalled some of the American composer Conlon Nancarrow's wonderful pieces with player pianos at unplayable tempos. In the case of Angela Davis and Chairman Mao, the piano translations strikingly revealed the essential musicality of their speech. Nevertheless, because the piano music (admirably performed by Benjamin Kobler) was played simultaneously with the recorded voices, one couldn't always hear what the speakers were actually saying -- might one suggest playing each speech unaccompanied before combining it with the piano?
And Helmut Lachenmann's 1966 "Intérieur" proved refreshing and exhilarating. A virtuoso exploration of drums, tom-toms, timpani, gongs, cymbals, triangles, xylophones and related percussion, it was a magical sonata of pitches, complex rhythms and dazzling timbres in several contrasting movements. Played with aplomb by Dirk Rothbrust, it proffered genuine musical beauty.
Mr. Scherer writes about music for the Journal. His new book is "A History of American Classical Music" (Sourcebooks).[quote]
Source:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119499965307092028.html
I think I already mentioned I'm a big fan of Max Raabe.
Prev
Linear Mode
