An Afternoon of Song

Today the big news was that Papa is now registered at the FU for, I think, his diploma! It was a relief to know it, and we celebrated with chocolate (and plenty of it), licorice allsorts and fruit gummies. It took a while until everyone came home, though. By the time I had finished preparing dinner (rotini with ground beef and a tomato sauce, with cherry tomatoes and bell pepper strips on the side) Mama had not come back yet.

At perhaps quarter to four I set off per U-Bahn to the Universität der Künste (UdK) building in the Fasanenstraße, close to the S- and U-Bahnhof Zoologischer Garten. At first I went in the wrong direction, but I suspected as much, and I soon received the right heading. It is a composite building, really, consisting of an old building (I'm guessing from the first years of the twentieth century) at the core, with two modern glass-and-steel-and-concrete additions to either side. I went first into the Konzertsaal part; completely empty, light brown, a sort of interior decorating wasteland, with one lone formally dressed woman sitting, bored stiff, in a ticket booth behind perforated plexiglass. She directed me to the 1B building. There I roamed about for at least ten minutes (it seemed longer), on three of the floors, in the vain search for the Theatersaal. The floor plan was intimate but complicated, because there were two small interior courtyards. At last I asked a lady in an office (I asked for the way to "das Theatersaal" instead of the correct "den Theatersaal," which was embarrassing, but at least instructive because she very tactfully corrected me) where the room was. So I went to the appropriate building annex, whose darkness and sixties-ish flair provided a decided contrast. A suited gentleman stood outside and answered my query as to whether I could still enter the Theatersaal rather grumpily.

Anyway, in the theatre, the masterclass (the first in a series of three) that I had come to see was well underway. A respectable crowd of well over fifty people had assembled in the audience, and on the black and rather harshly-lit stage there were a Steinway, an accompanist, a young dark-haired singer in black top and white skirt who was singing in nice full tones, and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, who was half-sitting and half-standing to the right. Soon the next singer was up; he sang a "Harfenlied" by Schubert, with what I suppose one could call a"belly voice," and lots of vibrato as well as a somewhat unclear diction. Then came another singer who sang something from Richard Strauss, with "Daemmergrauen." He was easier on the vibrato and, I suppose, used his "head voice" more often, which was a nice change and also automatically made it easy to understand the words. After that came a fairly rotund student with copious curly golden hair, who had lots of energy but shot it off in every direction as she sang something about "Kammerfenster" and "Gespenster" by Hugo Wolff. And then came a small student who had a small voice at the beginning, but who had a larger voice by and by after the many corrections to her incomprehensible and not very well calibrated, but still nice performance. The final song came from a tall student who sang another song from Mahler(?), this time (I think) with the lines, "Lasst mich allein/ Dein eigen sein." The lines stuck in my head because he made a break after the "allein," and Mr. Fischer-Dieskau suggested that he do a crescendo on the "allein" to tie it into the "dein," because otherwise it would sound like "Let me alone!" instead of "Let me alone . . . be yours." On the whole, I liked his singing most of all.

Anyway, this was an unusually painless masterclass. There was no acerbic commentary, no trembling, and no cold silences punctuated with nervous laughter. The only jarring element was the whispered and rather critical commentary of two very irritating girls. I relieved my feelings by glaring at them, but they didn't notice. At any rate, the main points that Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau corrected were failures of tempo, failure to pronounce words properly (like singing "Liecht" instead of "Licht," or "Morgään" instead of "Morgen," and making "lebt" and "liebt" indistinguishable), an overly loud or overly fast accompaniment, and not suiting the singing to the words (like bellowing "schmachten" instead of singing it more quietly and lingeringly). It was hard to hear everything that was said, but at least the singing came across well.

Yesterday I went to another UdK event, this time a viola concert in the Bundesallee building, quite as enjoyable. It's pleasant that there is such an emphasis on singing or playing expressively here, because in Canada the emphasis mostly seems to be on the technique, which makes for more boring masterclasses that occasionally "make the soul hurt" because the musician is not engaging with the music at all (even the dynamics are programmed in to the playing rather than being a natural part of it). But I must confess that I only went to two university-level masterclasses (one for the violin, the other for the piano) in Canada. I won't write more about yesterday's concert except to say that the students played pieces by Karl Stamitz, J.S. Bach and Max Reger, and that I don't detest the viola as many people seem to do.