Beethoven - Wilhelm Backhaus Beethoven Sonaten
Schumann - Sechs Gesange fur Sopran und Klavier Op 107
(transcribed by Aribert Reimann for soprano & string quartet)
Mozart - String Quartet No 19 "Dissonance"
Mendelssohn - "...oder soll es Tod bedeuten.."
(8 songs & a fragment reworked by Aribert Reimann for soprano & string quartet)
Lachenman - String Quartet No 3 "Grido"
J S Bach - Vier Duette aus der Klavierubung Teil 3 BWV 802-805
Rihm - Zwei Linien
Schubert - Klavierstuck Nr 6 As-Dur aus den Six Moments Musicaux D780
Lachenmann - Serynade
Lachenmann - String Quartets
Lachenmann - Allegro Sostenuto
Guess what the weather was like today?
Correct...
A day of Kultur - bus and S-Bahn to Potsdamerplatz...
..and the Kulturforum...
...to hear the Kuss String Quartet at 11am, play four pieces, two with soprano Mojca Erdmann...
Programme Notes
"Born in 1936 in Berlin, composer Aribert Reimann – himself a creator of numerous Lied compositions and also a subtle Lied accompanist as a pianist – repeatedly devoted time to the romantic Lied.
In this concert, soprano Mojca Erdmann and the Kuss Quartett present two of Reimann’s adaptations of romantic Lieder.
Reimann adapted Robert Schumann’s Six Songs Op. 107 – composed four years before his death – for soprano and string quartet, following Schumann’s conviction that the singing voice and piano alone cannot “express everything; apart from the expression of the whole, even subtle nuances of the poem shall become apparent”.
With “… or does it mean death?” Reimann adapted eight Lieder and a fragment for soprano and string quartet that Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy had composed based on poems by Heinrich Heine, and connected them cyclically with six intermezzi based on Mendelssohn’s music.
In this concert, Reimann’s compository reflexions on romantic Lied music will be placed in context with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s String Quartet in C Major KV 465 as well as with Helmut Lachenmann’s String Quartet No. 3, in relation to which the composer once wrote: “Pathways in art don’t lead anywhere and most certainly not to a ‘destination’.
For this goal is nowhere else but here – where friction between the creative will and its processes turns the familiar into the foreign …” "
Schumann (arr. Reimann), Mozart, Mendelssohn (arr. Reimann) and Lachenmann...
Absolutly wonderful, if less than tuneful in places...
..thanks, in the main, to Herr Lachenmann, seen here congratulating the Kuss team...
After two hours of fun, out into the sun...
...past the Jewish memorial...
...and to the Sony Center for lunch...
...before returning to the Kulturforum...
..and the Neue Nationalgalerie, designed by Mies van der Rohe, Bauhaus stalwart...
There is nothing above ground...
...so, down the stairs...
..and off we went...
..for an exhibition featuring many of the best pieces in the collection from the years 1968 to 2000, the third in a trilogy of exhibitions held here...
"After the exhibition "Modern Times " (1900-1945) and " The Divided Sky " (1945-1968) follows the view of the years between 1968 and 2000, which serves as a leitmotif of the title of Michel Houellebecq's novel 'Widening the Combat Zone ".
The French author described this novel from the 1990s as the spirit of a capitalist -oriented generation that understands their entire existence as a combat zone on different fronts.
In the visual arts, to 1989, split across two Germanies, violent struggles in society are reflected in many ways.
At the same time across the art world much related to the period's confrontations.
The presentation of the collection draws on a selection of top-class works of art to look at these different "combat zones" : great political themes and images, as well as to the questions of the limits of art, expressed through photography, video, performance, objective and conceptual art in the years 1968-2000.
The exhibition features prominent works by Barnett Newman, Joseph Beuys, Andy Warhol, Katharina Sieverding, Werner Tübke, Rebecca Horn, Andreas Gursky and Wolfgang Tillmans ."
...and, my favourite, Gerhard Richter...
Newman...
Etc, etc...
Hirst...
...and coffee and cake...
...or, rather, tart...
A walk around this oasis of splendour...
...noting this in the distance...
Back to the auditorium for another concert at 5pm...
Programme Notes
"In “Serynade”, the piano piece Helmut Lachenmann composed between 1997 and 2000, he traces new sounds the instrument can produce, how they might emerge through differentiated touch techniques or a new way of using the pedals.
The wordplay in the title of the approximately 30-minute composition alludes to the first letter of the first name of Lachenmann’s wife, Japanese pianist Yukiko Sugawara.
This title, however, also places the composition in a series of piano works by other composers, who took up the tradition of the serenade as a form of sophisticated 18th century entertainment music and sublimated it into subtle musical character portraits.
English pianist Nicolas Hodges’ repertoire has included Lachenmann’s “Serynade” for over a decade now, and his interpretation has received high praise, not least from the composer himself.
In the first part of his piano evening, Hodges presents “Zwei Linien”, a piece that Wolfgang Rihm spent 13 years on as a kind of “work in progress”. The title of the composition reflects Rihm’s focus on the two-part piano works of Johann Sebastian Bach such as the Inventions or Duetti.
Rihm used Bach’s music as a starting point for his own creative work, and Hodges highlights this by opening the recital with Bach’s 4 Duetti BWV 802-805."
Your reporters were in early...
..and Herr Lachenmann was here again...
Wild applause greeted the end of the performance, although the Exec Producer opined that bashing your elbows on a piano is not music...
Just as well Mr Hodges was using his forearms then...
The composer started a new piece as they left the stage...
In the foyer, we noted a display to conductors of the Berlin Philharmonic, whose home this is...
Out into the early evening sun...
...and the U-Bahn to...
Savignyplatz and Zwiebelfisch for drinks...
...before a walk home...
...stopping off at ...
...Diener for more drinks...
..and a typical German dinner...
Then home...
...to watch a gallant Scotland go down 2-1 on the other side of Germany - let's hope the country doesn't lose again on the 18th...
Excellent day's work...
Highlight of the Day : Culture...
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