2023-09-01 13:37:17
Classic with a wink: For the festival debut “Kalit 23” last weekend in the Uckermark, the renowned Berlin baroque ensemble Lautten Compagney knitted an entertaining, almost light-footed program. At least by Prussian standards – and it was really Ur-Prussia that welcomed the 120 or so visitors to the newly restored Friedenfelde manor house. Certainly not the rough-and-tumble Prussia of the tall fellows and the soldier king, but the gallant one of his son, Old Fritz. In 1776 he had the Friedenfeld squire Joachim Erdmann v. Arnim – father of the poet Achim v. Armin – appointed director of the Royal Court Opera. At that time, the foundations of the cross-class movement were created, which as Berlin Classic around 1800 embodied an apolitical variant of bourgeois-cultural self-assertion.
The Friedensfeld genius loci lives from this nexus. The curators of the festival, the music manager Christian Filips and the ensemble founder Wolfgang Katschner, addressed it with a homage to the star soprano Elisabeth Mara, who was born in Kassel. La Mara! Like Goethe, born in 1749, she was appointed to the Berlin Royal Opera at the age of 22, notwithstanding Frederick II’s deep-seated reservations about German female singers. Goethe had already dedicated a poem to her: “Among the happy ones, your ruling song tore me the delighted.” He wrote a second one for her 82nd birthday six decades later, two years before her death in today’s Tallinn.
Arias from the La Mara repertoire, performed by the soprano Johanna Kaldewei and accompanied by the Lautten Compagney, characterized the first part of the festival, which will in future take place on the last weekend of August in Friedenfelder Park. The name Kalit – a traditional Uckermark chip basket – emphasizes the regional roots.
Together with the hosts, a Berlin lawyer couple, the driving force Christian Filips designed the conceptual line. The Berlin classic will be the heart note; As with a good perfume, top and base notes playfully join in: Italian baroque, the Bach family or music from the environment of the king in Sanssouci. Works by Anna Amalie v. Prussia, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Carl Heinrich Graun, Johann Adolph Hasse and Antonio Vivaldi for the performance. As part of the supporting program, Christian Filips read texts by, among others, Bettine v. Arnim, daughter-in-law of the former landowner and manager.
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Since it was founded as a lute duo at the Hanns Eisler Music Academy in 1984, the Lautten Compagney has been an integral part of the Berlin and European baroque scene, with more than 60 performances a year. From next year it will also bear the title of Ensemble in Residence at the Friedenfelder Gutshaus. A youth baroque academy, workshops and regular rehearsals are planned.
The second part of “Kalit 23” belonged to the performance artist and author AnniKa von Trier. Interrupted by performances on the Schiffer piano, she read from her Brandenburg letters, a fictitious correspondence, enriched with charm, spirit and wit, between the spouses Bettine and Achim v. Arnim.
In the evening we went to “New Vivaldi” in neighboring Gerswalde, ennobled by the taz a few years ago as “Berlin’s 13th district: the hipster village in the Uckermark”. In the ancient fieldstone church, the Lautten Compagney gave their game free rein. And what a moving contrast: the gloomy, primitive hall with the towering oak columns as a veritable body of sound for Vivaldi’s stylized compositions enriched with jazz, blues and oriental elements. “New Vivaldi” demonstrates the freedom of true ability: unbridled imagination, faithfulness to the work and respect for the composer, simultaneously and without contradiction or conflict. You have never heard Vivaldi so delicious.
#Classic #wink #Uckermark