Chamber Concert

Chamber Concert

“Sorrow always – upward glance – celestial dew – recollection”: thus the words that Anton Webern set in his aphoristically short work for soprano and string quartet. They also stand as a motto for this unusual and cleverly assembled programme. The works in the first section come from completely different eras and interlock like meditations – devout, contemplative, ravishingly beautiful, yet pervaded by a “sweet” tone of sorrow. Schubert’s G major Quartet also directs its gaze into unknown dimensions. Few works of chamber music sustain the combination of sorrow and supplication with such existential force and urgency as this unique visionary creation from the year 1826.

Chamber Concert

For a musician, the fugue is inextricably linked with Bach, who raised the fugue to dizzying stylistic heights. The Latin fuga means “flight” – in other words, a theme “flees” from one voice to another and is repeated at different pitches. One of the most vital, long-lasting, and eternally modern musical forms of the past and present can be experienced in this chamber concert: starting with Mozart, who savored all the techniques he discovered in Bach, continuing with Beethoven, who replaced what contemporary critics considered the incomprehensible fugue of the last movement of his Quartet op. 130 with a more accessible finale, and finally ending with Widmann, in whose work soprano Serafina Starke runs away from the fugue – or is it the other way around?

Chamber Concert

For a musician, the fugue is inextricably linked with Bach, who raised the fugue to dizzying stylistic heights. The Latin fuga means “flight” – in other words, a theme “flees” from one voice to another and is repeated at different pitches. One of the most vital, long-lasting, and eternally modern musical forms of the past and present can be experienced in this chamber concert: starting with Mozart, who savored all the techniques he discovered in Bach, continuing with Beethoven, who replaced what contemporary critics considered the incomprehensible fugue of the last movement of his Quartet op. 130 with a more accessible finale, and finally ending with Widmann, in whose work soprano Serafina Starke runs away from the fugue – or is it the other way around?

Chamber Concert

It is a popular romantic theme: the fine line between genius and madness. In Beethoven’s case, all one needs to do is look at the portrait of the agitated artist with tangled hair and crazy eyes, who jots his notes down on paper in a manic creative frenzy and in the face of impending deafness. Wolf was hospitalized twice – and died in the clinic. When Schumann was admitted to Endenich, “melancholy with delusion” was noted as a diagnosis in the admission book. And the Italian Renaissance prince Carlo Gesualdo was not only a gifted composer, but very probably also a murderer. In the chromatic descent at the end of his madrigal, we seem to hear the agony of a guilty man tormented by remorse. The result? Insanely brilliant music!

Chamber Concert

It is a popular romantic theme: the fine line between genius and madness. In Beethoven’s case, all one needs to do is look at the portrait of the agitated artist with tangled hair and crazy eyes, who jots his notes down on paper in a manic creative frenzy and in the face of impending deafness. Wolf was hospitalized twice – and died in the clinic. When Schumann was admitted to Endenich, “melancholy with delusion” was noted as a diagnosis in the admission book. And the Italian Renaissance prince Carlo Gesualdo was not only a gifted composer, but very probably also a murderer. In the chromatic descent at the end of his madrigal, we seem to hear the agony of a guilty man tormented by remorse. The result? Insanely brilliant music!

Chamber concert Ballhaus Wedding

The concert with members of the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester and the Rundfunkchor Berlin illuminates a fascinating section of Jewish music and Jewish culture in the 1920s in Berlin.Era of the 1920s in Berlin. Until the National Socialists seized power in 1933, Berlin was considered one of the most culturally exciting cities in the world for about a decade. Right in the centre: Kurt Weill, Bertolt Brecht and their Dreigroschenoper. But the Jewish cantors Arno Nadel, Mark Warschawski and Joseph Achron also wrote Berlin music history in an endearing way. Ballrooms have had a great time in Berlin. Without the plush dance halls, the Golden Twenties would probably not have become the cult brand that it is today, and which even had an impact on the founding years of radio. The RSB opens up two of Berlin’s lovingly maintained ballrooms for selected chamber concerts: the Ballhaus Wedding and the Ballhaus Neukölln, today’s “Heimathafen”.Both mark stations on an imaginary line between the orchestra’s two radio houses during its 100-year history: the Haus des Rundfunks in Charlottenburg and the Funkhaus Nalepastraße in Oberschöneweide.

Chamber concert Kühlhaus Berlin

Chamber Concert

Composed in 1785, Mozart’s K 478 was his first contribution to the piano quartet genre. The emotionality of the opening movement’s minore key and the subtly wrought dialogue between strings and piano proclaim its high artistic standards. No less brilliant is the Piano Quartet composed 100 years later by the young Richard Strauss. In his youthful élan he vacillates between engagement with romantic models (especially Brahms) and harbingers of his own style. The ennoblement of the clarinet as a chamber music instrument takes us back to Mozart. To the present day, many works owe their existence to the challenge of blending its timbre with the strings. The same is true of Veress’s Trio of 1972 and Penderecki’s Quartet of 1993, whose elegiac finale also pays tribute to Schubert’s C major Quintet.

Chamber Concert

Composed in 1785, Mozart’s K 478 was his first contribution to the piano quartet genre. The emotionality of the opening movement’s minore key and the subtly wrought dialogue between strings and piano proclaim its high artistic standards. No less brilliant is the Piano Quartet composed 100 years later by the young Richard Strauss. In his youthful élan he vacillates between engagement with romantic models (especially Brahms) and harbingers of his own style. The ennoblement of the clarinet as a chamber music instrument takes us back to Mozart. To the present day, many works owe their existence to the challenge of blending its timbre with the strings. The same is true of Veress’s Trio of 1972 and Penderecki’s Quartet of 1993, whose elegiac finale also pays tribute to Schubert’s C major Quintet.

Chamber Concert

This evening of Nordic chamber music covers a wide range of styles by composers from four Scandinavian countries. The historical starting point is the Septet for Winds and Strings, written in 1817 by the Swedish romantic composer Franz Berwald. It is unmistakably modelled on Beethoven’s masterpiece for the same combination of instruments. Grieg’s unfinished F major String Quartet of 1891 exudes a lilting charm and a Norwegian hue, while the E flat major Quartet by his Danish colleague Carl Nielsen (1898) strikes out on noticeably more modern paths. Rounding off the programme are two pièces de occasion: an enchanting Serenade with a touch of Vienna, composed by Sibelius during a holiday on Finland’s Archipelago Sea, and a humorous “unrequited” nocturnal serenade by Carl Nielsen, written during a concert tour in 1914.