Cave meets Schubert

Destitute and directionless, Australian musician Nick Cave arrived in West Berlin in the 1980s, plunging himself into the city’s drug scene and emerging as an underground legend. His 1988 album Tender Prey, created with The Bad Seeds during his Berlin years, now undergoes a romantic symphonic synthesis as part of the Schall&Rausch festival. In the subterranean chamber of the former Kindl brewery, the orchestra of the Komische Oper Berlin – under the baton of Music Director James Gaffigan – juxtaposes the pitch-black death wish of a post-punk junkie against the world-weariness of Franz Schubert’s lonely wanderer. Songs of futility and farewell from Schubert’s 1827 song cycle Winterreise, in Hans Zender’s orchestral arrangement, resonate with a sharp chill as they repeatedly pierce through Nick Cave’s brooding soundtrack.