Nico and The Navigators delight with Schubert Variations
Schubert wrote 600 songs. Time and again, they have been artistically reworked by others. Now by Nico and The Navigators.
The singer is silent. The pianist waits. The audience holds its breath. This is that famous opening moment when two musical lone warriors become a monad, which in itself is an impossibility. Seconds stretch into minutes. Anyone who has ever experienced a song recital knows this. At some point, the man must finally open his mouth!
On the stage of the Verdo concert hall in Hitzacker, at the premiere of the new Schubert production by Nico and The Navigators, the faces of the actors can be seen in parallel, also in close-up, on the video screen. The Russian baritone Nikolay Borchev stares holes in the air, his song accompanist Jan Philip Schulze looks worried.
Then encouraging, demanding, pleading, asking. Mischievous, affectionate, ironic, desperate. How many different ways are there of shouting "Now!" with mimicry alone? Or: "Now, let's go"?
The sublime and the banal are close together
Finally, the first notes of the prelude to the "Ständchen" from Franz Schubert's "Schwanengesang" drip heavily from the grand piano. Pathos and silliness, the sublime and the banal are so close together in this music that the "Komm, beglücke mich!" at the end of the chorus, when the voice soars, may be understood either way, even personally.
Schubert wrote more than 600 songs. No two are alike, not every text set to music is great literature. But there is hardly a song that has not succeeded in its own way. Some became folk songs, many belong to the treasure trove of quotations of generations.
It is not a new idea that one has to create artistic added value out of this worldwide popularity as a "free rider" (Matthias Goerne), so to speak, and that one has to paint over the Schubert song in a worldly way, recompose it and process it into new songs or novels, dance or theatre evenings. There are scenic Schubert song cycles by Christoph Marthaler, William Kentridge and many others.
The ensemble is joined by the fabulous Kuss Quartett
The ensemble Nico and The Navigators around director Nicola Hümpel already made their contribution to this fashion in 2017 with "Silent Songs into the wild" in Brussels, in co-production with the Berlin Konzerthaus. Now, at the opening of the Summer Music Days in Hitzacker, a radicalised second version was premiered, with a largely new cast.
For the first time, Jan Philip Schulze is taking part, contributing some virtuoso solo pieces, including a powerful arrangement of "Die Stadt". In addition, there is the fabulous Kuss Quartet. It contributes chamber music islands of non-verbal poetry, for example, dead-worm ticking, in "Death and the Girl".
The performers come from seven countries
Above all, they mingle improvisationally with the rest of the travelling folk of singers, dancers, acrobats. Some songs are accompanied only by harmonies chirped in flageolet. Others turn into songs without words, sung by piano, guitar and double bass (Tobias Weber). Still others are spoken or fray into Arabic lament melismas by the Algerian-born contralto Sarah Laulan.
The performers come from seven countries. This is the basic theme of the evening - Schubert's music as a hymn of empathy and good humour, of friendship and home. One walks out confidently, one's head full of good music. The fantastic double projections, which are processed by Oliver Proske's video technology, dominate the scene.
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