I think my organ is whistling

Whisky in the Tafelhalle - and that at the ION, how does that go together? Very well, as the performance of the music performers Nico and the Navigators and the instrumental ensemble Urban Strings showed. In a staged concert, both took the audience to the Scottish Highlands, merging the courtly music of Henry Purcell, Nicola Matteis, Francesco Corbetta and Thomas Mace with the folk music of the Scottish fiddler culture still cultivated today - including that of the famous Niel Gow. Common solvent: the Highland whisky, which Christian monks once invented there and whose so spiritual we fleeting nature was captured aptly in the concert title. Angels' Share is the portion of the whiskey that evaporates during storage. It is said to belong to the angels, perhaps that is why the dancer Nadine Milzner, who seems as aloof as she is fragile, had incorporated a large fan into her gold dress, which she could spread out like an angel's wing. Artistic director Nicola Hümpel embedded her gracefully hesitant poetry of movement in a frame story enriched with situation comedy à la Christoph Marthaler. A Scottish fiddler (Georg Kallweit), who plays by ear with a portable record player, and a baroque ensemble first clash, but in the end let the tiresome division between "serious" and "entertaining" music become obsolete when they make music together. A lanky and talkative young Englishman (Adrian Gillott) traces his Scottish heart, and flirts awkwardly with the charming singer Julla von Landsberg. The idea behind it: New ION Cher Folkert Uhde wants to break up the rigid rituals of a conventional concert in the performance first shown at Radialsystem V in Berlin. The tongue-in-cheek mixture of comedy and poetry in the play scenes is intended to sharpen concentration and create a more emotional approach to the music. This works very well: for example when von Landsberg, with her wonderfully softly timbrated baroque soprano, devotedly sings Purcell's "Music for a while" while being reverently embraced by Gillott. Or when three violinists approach Landsberg as menacing shadowy figures during the frost staccato of Cold Song. This physical quality also makes the playing of the baroque ensemble seem more vivid; violinist Mayumi Hirasaki is outstanding in her presence and bowing. Meanwhile, Gillott eagerly spreads out maps and Highland poetry, quotes Shakespeare and Edmund Spenser, makes fun of Celtic clichés and connects an organ pipe to a huge air-filled seat cushion, thus building an absurdly funny bridge between the bagpipe sound and the central instrument of the ION. At the end, there is whisky for everyone, including the audience, which - purists may forgive it - as a kind of communion has a more physical and intense effect than many a conventional sacred concert. The driving rhythm of the pub music carries everyone away.

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