Great bafflement during a recent week in Berlin, city of bleak exteriors, whose human and cultural rewards are almost wholly indoors — in its wealth of concert halls, opera houses and museums.
Great bafflement during a recent week in Berlin, city of bleak exteriors, whose human and cultural rewards are almost wholly indoors — in its wealth of concert halls, opera houses and museums.
Museums are, 20 years after reunification, ever-reliable. The music scene is passing and evanescent. I had hoped to find, over the Easter period, seasonal relevance of the most exalted kind — a St Matthew Passion or Parsifal on or around Good Friday itself. But schedules were bare, if not literally barren. The nearest with Wagner was an old Tristan reputed to be weary and routine; with Bach, I happened, in the course of my explorations, upon the Maxim Gorki Theatre, and realised with a frisson that it was in this fine little building that Mendelssohn had directed the landmark revival in 1829 that launched the St Matthew Passion after decades of neglect as the greatest imaginable work of its sort.
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