Am Puls

Standing at the edge of the abyss, a man sees a catastrophe threatening to destroy him: a composer working with his ears for other people’s ears realizes he will grow deaf. In his early thirties, to boot. »I shall seize fate by the throat; it shall certainly never wholly overcome me.« Thus Ludwig von Beethoven in 1801. At the time, he was working on his Second Symphony – a work that sounds so positive, effervescent and confident that one cannot recognize the profound crisis affecting Beethoven in any of its notes. Can music be a mantra for improvement? An invocation of hope where no hope can reasonably exist? A counter-spell against ink-black depression? It seems difficult to find another explanation for so much verve amidst desperation. György Ligeti and Antonín Dvořák deliver energy kicks of their own, recurring to the vivacious folk music of their homelands – and ensuring that the great violinist Veronika Eberle, the whirlwind conductor Anja Bihlmaier on the podium and the Gürzenich Orchestra can show off everything they have, from the first to the last note. Galactic Sound »My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nachos« – or do you prefer »Mary’s Virgin Explanation Made Joseph Suspect Upstairs Neighbour«? Either way, where would we be without mnemonics! These two, for the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn,
Uranus and Neptune, are helpful educational tools. The celestial body Pluto is not part of our mnemonics, as it was judged too small a few years ago and therefore banned from the list of planets. In Gustav Holst’s magnificent orchestral work The Planets, Pluto does not shine either, for it had not been discovered in 1914, when the composer began working on the score. The sonic astrologer Holst portrays his cosmic protagonists as »Bringer of War« (Mars), »Bringer of Peace« (Venus) and »Mystic« (Neptune), for example, crafting a brilliant acoustic horoscope with a masterful instrumentation. The famous French violinist Renaud Capuçon, on the other hand, embarks upon a journey through the infinite vastness of Samuel Barber’s bacchantic Violin Concerto. Harry Ogg – a familiar figure on the Gürzenich Orchestra’s conductor’s podium – makes the stars shine. Confidence With a certain lack of reverence, one could rightfully call Ein Deutsches Requiem by Johannes Brahms a bit of a bait-and-switch. After all, this is no Requiem, a Catholic mass for the dead in Latin – instead, it is one that focuses entirely on the living. Here, we concentrate not on the deceased, on their path towards God’s throne, the horrors of the Last Judgment and their fearful pleas for mercy in the hereafter. Instead, the work speaks to all those who remain on earth, who »bear sorrow« and require consolation in their grief. The inevitability and pain of parting and endings are not masked here. And yet, this German Requiem is full.