A challenge for the senses that feels really good:
Klezmer Re-Constructed – Concert with video film in the Munich Kammerspiele
It is about a composed Jewish wedding – Daniel Grossmann and the composer Moritz Gagern have worked on the work Nigunim a year. The piece was already premiered by the JCOM in 2018. Now there was a new "premiere" - in the version expanded to include the artistic film by Christoph Brech with the Munich Marionette Theater, whose rod puppets play the stages of a Jewish wedding in silhouette. In addition, the gramophone as a symbol of the search for traces of the few recordings that have survived of original "Klezmer music".
There is a fine line between multimedia demands and overwhelming the audience. Yes, they demand a lot from us listeners, viewers and, indeed, wedding guests. It is this soulful directness, this weighty lightness that appeals to all the senses in the fully occupied Kammerspiele at the end of April 2023 and literally transports you, allowing you to take part in the Eastern European wedding tradition.
Under Grossmann's direction, "the JCOM highlights the diversity of the musical language with its small, powerful discharges that break out of the rather delicate foundation," says the Neue Musikzeitung. This is both a claim and an honor for the orchestra, and I have to say - given the sensual, almost supernatural performance - that I was both well entertained and learned a lot while immersing myself in this tradition of Klezmer music, which is still foreign to many of us.
What a joyful folk music in the truest sense of the word from the literally translated "vessel of song"! Founded in the 15th century, timelessly captivating all visitors and on this evening integrating the wedding party with the bride and groom on the screen, not liturgical, but definitely religious, rousing and indulgent. So perfectly framed by Brecht's "Nigunim" puppets, who so sensitively play out the confrontation with the Klezmer origins. They don't play, they play up: with violin and viola, trombone and trumpet, accordion and percussion; wild, free, pure, very big and not at all well-behaved. It is a journey through time that remains in the present, a journey to Eastern Europe that is anchored in our world that is fused with everyone and everything. Surreal silhouette-like and yet so realistically anchored in our here and now. Shouldn't a piece of Klezmer resonate in all of our everyday lives?
A BLOG POST BY MARA FROM THE P-SEMINAR 'A YEAR WITH THE JCOM' OF Q11 OF THE NYMPHENBURGER GYMNASIUM