Musique classique, opéra, ballet et danse en Freiburg, Allemagne

The idea of inviting a Poetry Slam champion to moderate a young person’s symphony orchestra concert was an intriguing one, and had plenty of scope to be a fascinating marriage between punk-inspired verse and classical music.

Susanna Mälkki, current Musical Director of the trail-blazing new music specialists Ensemble Intercontemporain conducted the SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg in a concert showcasing two French impressionists’ love affair with Spain, Brice Pauset’s fascination with the symphony orchestra’s timbral spectrum, and Alexander Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy.

Can two composers have so much, yet so little in common? Or be such accommodating, yet such uncomfortable bedfellows? The SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg with their principal conductor François-Xavier Roth addressed these questions in exhilarating style, in a “turn-of-the-century time capsule” which thrilled and enchanted upon its opening.

The fragile, stuttering tones died away, and pulling the instrument away from her lips, the trumpeter looked uncertainly around the group of instrumentalists sat with her on the stage.“What I loved about that was the way that the music started to breathe when you yourself had to take a breath. Think about how important silence can be when we improvise.

There is a rare beauty to be found in the “normality” of human nature, in which the sense of just “being” transcends any degree of artificial decoration or finery.

In a programme entitled “Ein Jüngling liebt ein Mädchen” (“A Young Man Loves a Girl”), the young baritone Tobias Berndt performed a selection of Romantic German Lieder in Freiburg’s Historisches Kaufhaus, culminating in Robert Schumann’s (1810-56) much-loved song cycle Dichterliebe.