Homeseekers

"Silent songs into the wild" sees the Nico and the Navigators ensemble combine Schubert's songs with a multi-layered performance about flight and displacement in the concert hall. The topic of "flight and displacement" is not an easy one for art: approaches can quickly come across as overeager, trite or accusatory. So it is all the more astonishing that Nico and the Navigators, performing in the concert hall under the direction of Nicola Hümpel, succeed in staging the experience of being foreign and looking for one's home in this multi-layered performance of Schubert's songs so impressively that no pathos arises. "SILENT SONGS into the wild" starts off gently: the Apollon Musagète Quartet plays Schubert's "Der Wanderer", but defamiliarises the classical score by incorporating the guitar and double bass, thereby penetrating to the roots of this melancholy piece and creating a sound universe that comes across as modern, strong-willed and yet sensitive. The lines from "The Guide-Post" could read as a motto for the entire evening: "At every crossing there is a post / It points towards the town / I will travel far beyond them / I'll seek rest, but find none." The technological love chaos of the modern age Musicians, singers and dancers from seven nations are guided by the weightiness of the music and the turmoil of the lyrics. Each song has its own contemporary motto: "The Dead and the Living", "Lampedusa", or "Distant Lands". It isn't just dancers Yui Kawaguchi, Anna-Luise Recke and Michael Shapira who explore their bodies in powerful choreographies. The singers also have to prove themselves physically on stage; they are ensnared and encircled, danced around and fought over. Take tenor Ted Schmitz, who with his broad American accent knows how to break apart Schubert's songs and channel them into new directions. These are personal approaches that are not limited by reverence. While the first half may come across as a little wistful, the second part allows the artists to reflect the themes ironically. For instance, in "Tindertribe", when the technological love chaos of the western modern age is coupled with Schubert's "Good Night" and thereby becomes charged with transhistorical validity: "So love delights in changes, / God has made it so, / Ever-changing from old to new, / Good night, my love, good night!" At the end we hear the finale of Schubert's string quartet “Death and the Maiden” – ringing out so clearly, energetically and convincingly that for a long time the audience has no desire to go home.

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