German culture strikes chords and discord

My February seems to have been dominated by German culture, and I didn’t even make it to Carnival! Instead I heard the Berlin-based Artemis quartet, went to a literary evening whose focus was the author W.G. Sebald (1944-2001) and enjoyed my first live performance of the Berliner Philharmoniker. Each of the evenings included a discovery, sometimes to my liking and sometimes not, and something familiar.

The Sebald event was part of an exchange between Passa Porta, the international house of literature in Brussels, and the Literaturhaus Stuttgart. Having lived near Stuttgart for a year, a period when I started to read contemporary German-language authors, nostalgia may well have been one reason for me deciding to go along.

Much of the evening was devoted to a discussion between a journalist who had interviewed Sebald, a German literature professor from the Free University of Brussels and a Flemish writer. The three guests interrupted their discussion by playing parts of interviews recorded with Sebald and reading extracts from some of his books.

I was interested by the ideas that seemed to motivate Sebald’s writing: knowing where he came from; his history; memory; remembering the past; exploring what the truth is with regards to the past. And yet, despite this, the evening didn’t make me want to go and read Sebald. I was fascinated by the ideas and the literary criticism, but what little I heard of the actual works simply didn’t resonate enough with me.

My experience of listening to the Artemis quartet was similar in one respect. Their latest Brussels concert included Quartet no. 1 by Jörg Widmann, a contemporary German composer who is supported by the Artemis quartet.

The cellist preceded the performance with a word or two about the work, which was extremely helpful. For example, he talked of how the beginning of the piece, which has the instruments making hesitant starts and scratching sounds on the strings, was inspired by the difficulty of filling a blank page, the difficulty of starting to compose a piece. Had it not been explained, I could imagine having exchanged a few quizzical looks. The piece had some beautiful sounds and made me listen attentively to try and make sense of it, but I certainly wasn’t immediately converted into a Widmann fan. It was the Artemis’s performance of two Schubert quartets (no.s 9 and 15) that captivated me.

The novelty in the Berliner Philharmoniker’s concert was Messiaen’s Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum, which I’d only ever heard on a CD and to be honest had never managed to listen to it all the way through without getting distracted. In this case, I was in for a pleasant surprise as the live performance was totally different. The largest metal gong, taller than the musician striking it, reverberated impressively around the hall, and in fact needed a second percussionist to help stop its sound, such was its power. All the percussion was exciting to watch and listen, be it the clashing cymbals, tubular bells or the rows of hanging gongs.

Although I was impressed by the Messiaen, especially given that the composer isn’t one I’d usually choose, it was Bruckner’s symphony no. 9 in the second half that made the concert for me. I perhaps paid even more attention than usual to the strings given that they didn’t have a part in the Messiaen. Wow, what a sound. I can still here the amazing pizzicato at the start of the second movement!

I don’t want to have to wait a few years for the orchestra to return to Brussels, so I think there’s nothing for it but to book a trip to Berlin and hear them in their home concert hall, the Philharmonie. And maybe catch the Artemis quartet in their home city too. Oh and why not discover the Literaturhaus Berlin while I’m at it. Ok the seeds of an idea have been planted!