Beethoven in a new light

The 73rd Summer Music Days Hitzacker, Germany's oldest and probably also most innovative chamber music festival, have once again attracted many music lovers to the small, idyllic town on the Elbe. The theme is "Beethoven!" Oliver Wille, who has been artistic director of the "Sommerliche" since 2016, has focused on what he calls his "favorite composer Beethoven" for this year, two years before his 250th birthday. Famous artists will be making appearances during the 9-day festival, from Camilla Tilling and Christian Tetzlaff to Rudolf Buchbinder. Festival greeting: Nike Wagner from the Beethoven Fest Bonn A very special guest came from Bonn, Nike Wagner, the great-granddaughter of the great composer. As artistic director of the Beethoven Fest Bonn (since 2014), she was able to give forward-looking impulses on the topic of "anniversary years" in her lecture "Wagner's Beethoven". She explained what tasks a Beethovenfest in the 21st century has to face and came to the conclusion that the works should not only always be played and interpreted anew, but also undergo what she calls a "productive reshaping." "Productive reshaping" In Hitzacker, that's exactly what happens, in almost every single event. And that is what distinguishes this congenial festival in the easternmost corner of Lower Saxony to a special degree. Oliver Wille, the second violinist of the Kuss Quartet, presented Beethoven's last quartet, Opus 135, to the audience in a new, almost sensational light. Beethoven's last string quartet on a knife edge The musicians, barefoot and in casual dress, played without notes, going back and forth as if they were talking to each other, in keeping with Goethe's famous phrase about quartet playing as a "conversation of four reasonable people." But whether it was "reasonable" for two musicians to climb onto a large u-shaped seesaw and continue playing there remains to be seen. It looked breakneck and amazed not a little. Scenic interpretation by Nico and the Navigators Dancer Yui Kawaguchi (Nico and the Navigators) accompanied the playing of the kissing quartet with highly virtuosic, precise dance movements that always matched the music, thus expanding it into a quintet. In this way, the five artists have succeeded in a fascinating "productive transformation" of Beethoven's last string quartet, which is often perceived as unwieldy, and which has caused a storm of enthusiasm among the audience.

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