Chamber concert Kühlhaus Berlin

Chamber concert Kühlhaus Berlin

Chamber concert Kühlhaus Berlin

Chamber concert Kühlhaus

With “Herz” and Mendelssohn An evening of chamber music, performed by members of the members of the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, is dedicated to three female composers. female composers. Including the sister of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Fanny Hensel-Mendelssohn, the actual inventor of the “Songs without words”. Grażyna Bacewicz was regarded as a musical luminary in Poland of the mid-20th century. And Maria Herz (1878-1950)? Is currently being rediscovered, for example by us!

Chamber concert Kühlhaus

Chamber concert Kühlhaus

How do we maintain our composure and sense of humour in the face of imminent catastrophes? The question is aimed at a survival strategy not only for mankind, but for nature as a whole. It is always topical, and it seems to be especially so today. It was no less topical in 1939. One of the man-made disasters, the Second World War, was imminent. Four compositional heavyweights from the first half of the 20th century make their mark in today’s concert, two of them directly from 1939. Two others “play” with listeners’ expectations in the 1920s – and again in the 2020s. The “roaring twenties” were the birth of radio in Germany and thus also of the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin. The orchestra celebrated its centenary in the 2023/2024 season. Today’s chamber concert with works by Zemlinsky, Milhaud, Weill and Hindemith, among others, summarises four composers who are directly connected to the history of the orchestra – at the time as interpreters of their own works. In addition, the concert once again provides food for thought for the future of radio and concert music in the anniversary season: analogue music, literally created by living breath, meets digitally synthesised music created with the help of computer technology and electricity, brought in by RSB cooperation partner Catalyst – Institute for Creative Arts and Technology. Are the two worlds able to interact with each other? What role do creative people play in this? You are welcome to find out!

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

“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!