On Saturday I toddled off to Unter den Linden, on foot, to hear the annual concert that the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, conducted by Daniel Barenboim, presents on the Bebelplatz every year in summer. It is surrounded by history, from the equestrian statue of Frederick the Great with glimmers of green corrosion, linden trees newly planted since the Second World War but literally in a long line of tradition, stretching away toward the Brandenburger Tor. Across the street and flanking the Bebelplatz, central buildings of what used to be the Berlin University, born of the Humboldts and their generation, and later hosting as professors Max Planck and other scientists and learned men of similar or lesser renown. In one corner, almost humbly, the dome of the St. Hedwig's Kathedrale, emblem of a long religious history; down the street, less purely religious, the Berliner Dom which was a bit of a personal ambition of William II. In the centre of the square itself, a memorial to the notorious burning of books by the Nazi regime. And, all along one side, the Staatsoper itself, which is being renovated, so that its musicians and stagehands and set designers and everyone else have been been evicted for years to the Schiller Theatre.
None of this is news to any Berliner, of course, except if one or two details are so inaccurate that I have just invented them.
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At any rate, I mixed up the way to the German faculty and other faculty buildings of the Humboldt University, with the way I wanted to take to the Bebelplatz, so I arrived there later than intended at perhaps 5:20. The Platz itself (judging from my view) seemed full already. So I set up camp with my back to the staircase at the Faculty of Law or a nearby building, cobblestones underneath me strewn with the detritus of the linden trees. Despite the acute angle of vision, I had a splendid view of the viewing screen left of the stage — especially when I stood up.
An elderly lady with a camping stool established herself to my left. Less to my enjoyment, so did a German tourist family of limited conversational powers: a mother, father, and two children. The father audibly could not get over the fact that the hot dogs he bought for everyone — from the food stall set up in the middle of the street (where the emergency vehicles and staff were also hovering) — were €2.50 apiece. It did not seem terribly expensive. The children were hoisted onto the railing of the stairs, where due to my shortness I had not been able to find a seat, and then ate their hot dogs, one of them dropping a chewed crumb onto my shoe. I tried to flick it off, but due to its soggy consistency that was only half successful, so I felt a thunderous expression settling on my face. One child felt momentarily uncomfortable with his perch on the railing and asked his father to help him off. "Stay there, or else you'll lose the seat!" his father responded without sympathy, reflecting the greedy grabbing of prime and prime-er positions that was going on generally. When the music began and one of the children asked "Is that an oboe?" and the mother answered, "Yes, it is!" I feared the worst: namely, a detailed verbal inventory of every instrument in the entire orchestra. But surprisingly that was largely the bulk of their conversation during the music.
I also felt mean-spirited when the johnny-come-lately portion of the audience filled the sidewalk underneath the staircase. It stood right in my face as I sat on the ground, and in the old lady's face as she sat on her chair. Unfortunately, due to my professional occupations on weekdays, my attention was greatly distracted from the Sibelius Violin Concerto by staring at the shoes unwillingly and mentally attributing them to brands and types. 'Superga — I entered that brand into the database myself. Art of Soule, New Balance — shudder, lots of shoes there — Skechers, and is that Nike or Adidas? — Well, if I can't tell, I can't be too badly traumatized. — Tourist couple is wearing Dolomites. Hadn't heard of those, I think. Blue leather loafers with a stenciled cut pattern there, espadrilles with canvas in blue and white stripes and braided soles, black crocs with a thin strap at the back,' etc., etc. The people kept shuffling past left and right (depending on whether they were entering or leaving the concert), through the entire concert, and so the parade of shoes was interminable, and very gradual because they had to push past reluctant people, and I kept an eye out for ones that reappeared from the right direction eventually.
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| Winter Landscape in Moonlight, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1919) I was remembering another painting, though. Source: Wikimedia Commons |
But I did think of the legs of people as trees, because they did filter out the light when the crowd was particularly dense, and because Sibelius is associated for me with 1. Finland, 2. forests, and 3. a certain painting by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, it put me in the mood reasonably well. But although I liked the sound quality very much, and I thought that the soloist played the Sibelius concert reasonably well, I felt that it was too polished and not as spontaneous as I'd have liked. But it did have the type of spontaneity, from time to time, reminiscent of an enjoyably wild, stubborn session in a practicing room when nobody else is around. On the other hand, when I got home and listened to a recording of Jascha Heifetz, which did appear very intelligent and especially sublime now that I had an already good version to compare it to, I didn't feel that he particularly liked the concert.
Then, after a brief pause, where wisps of musicians tuning their instruments flew on the breeze, the orchestra started the Eroica symphony of Beethoven. At this point, all of the history that I 'wittered on' about at the beginning of this blog post fell into place, and I felt transported into a genteel living room in the very early 19th century, full of clever, cultured, and unnecessarily rich people, quietly listening, in carefully harmonious surroundings. The natural linden trees, the composed blue sky and the grey but smallish clouds, the picturesque but orderly artistic proportions of the buildings, the intellectual history emanating from their stones . . . 'A well of German, undefiled' by nationalism, I've thought; on the other hand, I don't think Beethoven was at all averse to nationalism, so that isn't particularly accurate.
Fiendishly, I left early. I did not want to (hyperbolically speaking) harm my legs irreparably by sitting awkwardly much longer, and I felt that I had gained the maximum of enjoyment from the concert already. So I went leftwards out of the crowd — brown leather ankle boots, unknown brand — to its fringes. There I listened to the Eroica's 2nd movement. Then I went off on the long walk home.
P.S.: In general, musicianship in the open air clearly had its risks. A dog barked in rough rhythmic accompaniment to the percussion, at one point; a lady in the audience yelled, 'Louder!' during the Sibelius — I wondered later whether I should have said 'Unverschämt!'; a baby cried heavily although briefly; and a car or motorcycle driver let his engine roar up the street. But the musicians seemed unperturbed, and after the first movement of the Sibelius, I could hear no hints of distraction anywhere. Also, the audience clapped between every movement. By that point I thought it would be rude not to join in, but I might have to perform penance later.
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