Razor-sharp

People expect Rossini's Petite Messe Solennelle to be a poetic affair. Having had its premiere at the Weimar Arts Festival, you can now catch this performance by “Nico and the Navigators” at Radialsys¬tem. Nicola Hümpel and Oliver Proske have transformed a sacred work into an evening of music, dance and very little plot. The orchestra is replaced by two grand pianos and a harmonium, which are brought in on podiums that roll silently across the stage. The 20 performers are dressed in Prussian blue, rust red or dark autumnal colours (costumes by Frauke Ritter); they run, stand, jump about and touch each other. Conducted by Nicholas Jenkins, who is there to keep time as much as to enthusiastically join in the action, most of them sing too, and very beautifully (in particular the bass Nikolay Borchev and the mezzo¬soprano Ulrike Mayer). Yui Kawaguchi, however, dances: she is a Puck in a red hood whose arms and legs form razor-sharp horizontal extensions. And Adrian Gillott, dressed in a black penitent's cassock, con¬verses with Peter Fasching about God and the world, of course. When Gillott appears again during the Agnus Dei, dressed in white underwear and standing before a light mist-filled background, then the pro¬ductions draws together youth, great seriousness and lightness in an almost calming way. Anyone can do irony. But this ensemble manages to let the gaiety in Rossini's Petite Messe Solennelle shine through wi¬thout denying its spirituality; it draws a picture of a composer who created a work in which he “put all of (his) little musical knowledge and worked with real love for religion”, and really gives new life to a piece of music that until now was destined to suffer an inconspicuous end in quite standard choral concerts.

<< Back to press overview