April 4 - Concert in Reinbek

When I am writing a journal on a trip, the most irritating part of awakening every morning is the spurt of compositional creativity that gets so easily lost once I get up. Here in Germany I would have all these great insights and possibly witty observations about German culture when I was half-awake and I could compose and refine them effortlessly. This seems to be particularly true when I write the basic narrative for each day in the evening, which was true on this journey. Additional events or themes of exposition would almost spontaneously occur the next morning as I awakened, and some of these new ideas were good ones, I think. But the result of these labors was typically as ephemeral as the morning dew, and I would often lose one of more of these Great Ideas before I could get downstairs, start up the computer, and start typing. I know that must sound like the fisherman’s story of the Big One That Got Away, but these ideas to fill in the gaps in the narrative or embellish some theme in a certain way really did occur almost 50% of the mornings in Germany.

I expect that this phenomenon is just a basic result of having some cognitive processing occurring overnight with the memory in a very loose, associationistic state that is soon lost due to stimulus-driven excitation when I awake. Since I’m writing most evenings, the unconscious process seems to be narrative completion and elaboration. Lois is much more musical, and her nighttime processing apparently was stimulated by our “German” context enough to pop up in the morning playing “Edelweiss” in her head. Funny how these things work, isn’t it? Be that as it may, I wish I knew of a way to preserve or retrieve some of these ideas. I’m thinking of keeping one of those small, hand-held recording machines beside the bed. That way I could get up and mutter to myself in the early morning and perhaps have enough cues to retrieve the ideas.

Lois, our resident musician, had the bright idea that we should attend a concert at Reinbek Palace, altho she was a bit nervous because no price was mentioned. So after breakfast and a quick run to the bakery down the street that was open on Sunday mornings (rare in Germany!), we walked down past the train station to the palace about 10:30. The concert room in the palace held around 150 people and by the time the concert started at 11 it was packed—they even had to bring in some extra seats. I asked Lois how many people a similar concert would draw in Burlington, a town about the same size of Reinbek, and she said around 35 people had attended the symphony concert she had played in. That is, I think, at least one possible indication that classical music is much more popular in Germany than in the U.S. It turned out to be a charity concert, so we just each donated 10 Euro and I think we had a marvelous performance for the price.

Most of the men were wearing suits and most of the women were in their Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes, so I felt distinctly under-dressed and hid in the back row of seats, trying to look inconspicuous. As it turned out, I had a perfect seat to watch the pianist’s hands, and he was a joy to watch. Definitely a flying fingers type of guy, and I never knew that sometimes the right hand is playing crossed over the left hand on the keyboard—it looked spectacularly awkward but didn’t cause this guy to miss a beat. As you might guess, this was not exactly “amateur night” at the old castle—the soloists played with the Hamburg Philharmonic orchestra and were very professional, which is to say, perfect.

The concert started off with a flautist (Bjorn Westlund) playing Debussy’s “Syrinx” and Carl Philip Emanuel Bach’s Sonata in A-Minor. That was followed with by a pianist (Cord Garben) playing Domenico Scarlatti’s Sonata in A-Minor and Beethoven’s Mondscheinsonate (Moonlight Sonata). The Moonlight Sonata was a version that had his letter to the “Ferne Geliebte” (Distant Beloved) read dramatically as the pianist was playing. The director had found this arrangement combining the Mondscheinsonate plus the letter by accident in the music archives of Berlin. The dramatic reading was done very well by Bernd Kraske, a professional elocutionist, I think. He is the only German I have heard so far that speaks as distinctly and clearly as Gustl—he spoke quite loudly, in fact, and filled the concert hall without any amplification.

The next piano piece was Carl Loewe’s “Bethesda”, which imitated a storm at see rather well, and then the pianist accompanied a great bass (Hidenori Komatsu) on several Schubert Lieder. Schubert, as usual, was very pretty and melodic. The pianist also accompanied an oboist (Thomas Rohde) on several Brahms songs (Wie Melodien, Salamander, Sapphische Ode, and an adaptation of the Violinkonzert opus 77). Lois judged the oboist to be “very good” with good vibrato, great breath control, and so forth, but she also noticed that he turned beet red during some of the longer parts. The pianist followed up with a solo performance of Chopin’s Polonaise in C-sharp minor and a quite rare performance of Walter Niemann’s music cycle based on Thomas Mann’s novel “Buddenbrooks”. All in all, it was a great concert of classical music.

Back at the house we watched the Formula 1 race from Bahrain in the afternoon (Ferrari cars placed 1 and 2) before relaxing for the evening with another fire. Besides the 15 minutes of misery on the evening news, we spent some time planning our trip to Luebeck the next day and writing the journal before turning in for the night.