Friday night in Berlin. Concert night.
Radialsystem. Brahms Requiem.
Rundfunkchor. Sasha Waltz staging. Yeah. Alles gut. Extra gut. Go for it!
Should be a winner.
A winner? It was a total
champion in every respect. I’m 67 years old, and I’ve just come home from the
most enjoyable sacred music evening I have ever experienced in all my years of
concert-going.
Radialsystem. What is it
about this venue that it so consistently brings forward outstanding and
original entertainment. Last night was my fifth visit and I’ve had four and a
half terrific evenings.
Tonight we saw the venue with
a different face on. The stage and bleachers had been cleared away and the main
hall was a virtually empty space. We had noticed the ticket said ‘Stehplatz’ …
but happily there were a few banquettes for the old and infirm. So what was
coming? Sacred music stripped of its usual straightjacket? Oh, yes …!
Brahms Deutsches Requiem.
Here called (with the composer’s blessing) ‘A Human Requiem’. Not in Latin. Not
following the traditional liturgical lines. Seven ‘movements’ for choir and
baritone (Konrad Jarnot) and soprano (Marlis Petersen) soloists, and piano duo
accompaniment. Lovely stuff: especially the opening choral movement and the
latter two solos. Last movement a tad too long, but who am I to tell Herr
Brahms?
The Rundfunk choir. A quite
lovely chorale. The sound that they made in the first few bars let us know we
were in for a night of special choral music. What it didn’t tell us was just
how special.
Which brings us to the
staging. And herein lay the triumph of the evening. Instead of being delivered
our sacred music by a serried rank of
vocalists in dicky-fronts and black ball-gowns, turning score pages
frantically and seeming totally disengaged from the subject of the evening, here
we had … as the title said, ‘a human requiem’. People singing: not just a
choir. Real people. For Sasha Waltz and Ilke Seifert clad their cast (and
‘cast’ was what they were) in a panorama of ‘normal’ clothes, and brought them
out of their frozen ranks to wander amongst the standing or floor-sitting
audience. OK a simple idea, but you have to have
it, and then put it in action.
The immediacy, the intimacy
of it! The human dimension thus given to a piece of religious text and matching
music. Brahms would have been delighted. How much more does one get involved in
the piece, when you have a stocky tenor in your left ear, a conductor (there
were two, one for each direction) climbing onto a box by your right elbow, a dark
slender contralto wandering past a few centimetres in front of you… and, as
they pass, the seemingly hundreds of singers are more than choristers: they are
each one a choir soloist for a few magic moments, to one person, then the next
…
The concept was a total
triumph, carried out triumphantly.
Of course, the singers
couldn’t wander for all of the 80 minutes the piece lasts. There had to be
other ideas. And there were. You couldn’t miss the ropes hanging expensively
from the ceiling. We were going to have acrobatics or swings at some stage. And
we did. Not even this choir was venturing acrobatics, but down came the swings
– an old revue chorus trick, but done here with a calmness and a joyous
feeling, which reeked of ‘humanity’.
There were lots of
‘pictures’, too, to catch the eye. Conductor Simon Halsey, a back-lit
silhouette against the warehouse window, the baritone high up in the lighting
gallery, throwing his beautiful voice and the Andante to the people below, the
soprano vanishing up what I think was a fire escape after her adorably tuneful
solo, and – best of all – the moment when the choir, scattered through the
seated crowd, gradually rose and began to sing. It seemed as if the whole room
was singing, every one of us … oh! how I longed to! … Magic moments. Wet-eyed
moments. Lump-in-the-throat moments…
After the piece had ended, in
a long, long silence, I couldn’t help myself from jumping up and pumping the
hand of the nearest singer: a bass who’d spent the last movement nearly sitting
on my knee (and my walking stick) … and pouring out my thanks.
A wonderful evening! But it’s only playing five nights at Radialsystem. Every one of them, by the way, a total sell-out. Surely this splendid ‘production’ must go on and be seen elsewhere, again and again…
although the logistics (and
the budget…)
Anyway, thank you
Radialsystem – and everyone concerned -- for another superb evening. If anyone
had told me I’d have such a ‘human’ experience at a Requiem… well, now I know
better!
Thought: tonight I go to the
Staatsoper to see a staged version of another piece written for choir and
soloists, Martin’s Le vin herbé. I
wonder how it will compare…
Footnote: thank you, too, management,
for not ’branding’ us this time, But I think the audience should be warned in
advance that some (only some) of them will be made to leave their shoes,
jackets and handbags outside. My soft new espadrilles would have made less
noise or mess than the sneakers that other folk went in wearing! Oh well, at
least they let me keep my walking stick!
And PS: cauliflower cheese
goes cool and soggy very quickly…
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