18-23 October 2012, Berlin Music

18-23 October 2012

Berlin


Berlin is a wonderful city for music. The Komische Oper Berlin may be called the Comic Opera, but it is as serious as it is comic and it is passionate about illuminating the story and making the stage come alive for the audience. We saw Orfeo by Claudio Monteverdi. Monteverdi lived to a good old age in Venice. He became a priest and spent his later years pondering life's great issues and setting them to music. Those compositions from the sixteen-thirties are considered the earliest, if not the first, operas.

The Komische Oper's theater, on the outside, is an unremarkable stone-clad box. Inside, it is lovely. Fairly intimate. Aglow with golden-hued sconces. Red velvet draperies framing the dozen or so arches on the second of two balconies. Between the arches torsos of large statues burst forth from the plaster. They twirl parasols and wield swords in dramatic poses. Our Orfeo performance began with trumpets playing to each other from opposing balconies. And birds flying overhead, dozens of them, mechanical, but life-like. The chorus descended from the stage, surrounded the audience, formed a ring around us and sang to us. The story of Orfeo is one of love found, then lost, then found, then lost. Along the way there are laments and there are love-fests, orgies. Ecstatic groups of bare chested women with long tresses and flowers in their hair. And men, also bare chested, whose lower halves were shaggy furry cloven-hooved animal legs. There was dancing. It was both classical and  contemporary all at once. The orchestra sounded excellent. It was a mix of traditional string instruments, and the eerie and exotic oud, with an accordion in lieu of harpsichord. The singers were articulate and expressive. If it sounds like I loved it. I did.

On the next day there was more music. We were in the Dussmann record store at mid-day when the principal players from a another opera company, the Deutsche Staatsoper, stood in the atrium and played Mozart's duet for violin and viola. They were outstanding, especially the violist.

From there we went for coffee to the Gendarmen-markt Platz, around the corner from our hotel. We sat outside. The sound of a street musician was wafting over to our table. He was playing the Mozart Clarinet Concerto. Live clarinet playing with a recorded orchestra accompaniment. He sounded terrific. And it was a special moment as it always is when that concerto is heard.

After coffee, we passed a church. A concert was about to start. Four french horns--the Berliner Horn Quartett--playing Bach fugues. Did we go? Yes, we did.

Was that enough music for one day? No. At eleven o'clock at night  we returned to the Komische Oper Berlin. This time we did not sit in the audience. We sat on stage facing the empty audience and the  amber lit, gold leafed theater interior. Forty of us were on stage--the Orfeo sets surrounding us--and a string quartet played Mozart to us from a dozen feet away with baroque bows and strings of dried animal gut. We turned back the hands of time. The music was new. We were guests of the prince in his elegant, gilded room being serenaded by his musicians playing the music written for his pleasure by his court composer.  What could top that?

How about a lunch concert in the atrium of the Berlin Philharmonic Concert Hall. Ninety minutes before the free trio concert the audience was lined up outside in the cold. When the doors opened they poured in. A flood of people. Hundreds and hundreds.  As many people as there were square feet in the atrium, it seemed. Filling every chair and balcony and stairway. Sitting on the floor and standing anywhere there was space available. It was a lively process. When the music began--Clarinet, cello and piano--there was a hush of quiet and stillness. It was a rapt audience. Soaking up music as if it were needed therapy. Was that enough music for us? No.

That same night we returned to the Hall for an evening orchestra concert. It was the orchestra of the Deustche Staatsoper (German State Opera) having a night out from the pit. Their theater from the late Eighteenth-Century is closed for renovation. For this concert they were using the Berlin Philharmonic's home. It is a famous space, noted for it's great sound and for the audience seats which encircle the orchestra entirely. I expected it to enjoy it. But I more than enjoyed it. It is a sound that is resonant, vibrant, clear, warm and it seduced me thoroughly. Of course, the orchestra had a role in the seduction, as did the conductor, Michael Gielen, and the compositions--Berlioz's Romeo and Juliet, Ravel's Scheherazade, Beethoven Symphony No. 8--but the star of the night was the symphony hall. I was elated and satisfied and impressed with the bounty of great music.

Music is a good reason to visit Berlin.

Marlow and Wes
18-23 October 2012
Berlin, Part One
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile