2024-01-03 21:43:20
Hania Rani sits in front of the former GDR broadcasting center on Nalepastrasse and looks out over the Berlin Spree. The Polish pianist and composer, whose real name is Hanna Raniszewska, runs a music studio on the extensive grounds on the Rummelsburg bank. The 33-year-old is one of the new stars of neoclassical music.
On tour worldwide between an impressive open-air concert in front of the Invalides in Paris (July 2022) and the Wonder Ballroom in Portland, Oregon (December 2023), it doesn’t matter to her under what genre she is marketed. She has mastered the entire keyboard and has a nerdy knowledge of repertoire from avant-garde to Radiohead. She can and wants to fuse styles without trying to flatter with pleasing strumming. A constant tightrope walk. Their new album “Ghosts” has finally opened the doors to electronic music.
Classical music with the energy of a rock ‘n’ roll band
The 33-year-old comes from Gdansk and regularly commutes between Lichtenberg and Warsaw, where she received a classical education at the Fryderyk Chopin University (UMFC). “In the final seminar at the Hanns Eisler University there were Eastern Europeans, Russians, people from Asia, but no Germans. I have no idea why,” she says.
A story from the current issue of the FAZ magazine “Frankfurter Allgemeine Quarterly”
Is it possible that the required perfection at the highest level is “too hard” for many of the local eleven? Lack of discipline to play in the classic Champions League? Rani states that she never found the hours of keyboard training to be torture. But a combination of passion and positive craziness would be required, she thinks. People around her say that she played her early, very spartan concerts with the energy of a rock ‘n’ roll band. One on the train to the top, mastering the cross-border cleverness of Taylor Swift with virtuosity.
The marriage of classical and pop has a long history. It’s not just Bach, BartÓk and Erik Satie that are on the agenda as public domain material without GEMA licenses. After the “Baroque Pop” of the early Sixties, Yes mastermind Rick Wakeman let Stravinsky’s “Firebird Suite” glow from his keyboard castle in the prog rock era, befittingly wearing a glittering magician’s cloak. In 1971, the British supergroup Emerson, Lake & Palmer declined the piano cycle “Pictures at an Exhibition” by the Russian composer Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky.
Philharmonics are opening up to fusion approaches
Around the turn of the millennium, Christian Kellersmann, the alto saxophonist of the band Die Zimmermann, launched the umbrella brand “Yellow Lounge” in his position as long-time head of the leading classical music label Deutsche Grammophon. This was deliberately placed in the breakbeat and techno environment at the Popkomm trade fair in Cologne. To this day it is a brand umbrella for all kinds of classical music experiments from Jeff Mills to Max Richter, including long drinks in a clubby atmosphere. Almost every philharmonic orchestra in the world has now opened up to such fusion approaches.
Hania Rani’s steady rise began in 2015. “Ghosts” is already her tenth album, which now also represents a “nouvelle vague” of musicians from the conservatory. A kind of Generation Y of neoclassical music that has little in common with popular impresarios of the previous era such as the miracle pianist Lang Lang (41) or the Argentine violinist Sol Gabetta (42).
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