Organization

Stage director

Nicola Hümpel

Set designer

Oliver Proske

Lighting designer

Andreas Fuchs

Costume designer

Yui Kawaguchi

Sonja Zirkler

Singer

Tenor

Ted Schmitz

Conductor

Dramaturge

Andrea Haller

Nico and the Navigators

Force & Freedom

Schwetzingen

Germany

Schloss Schwetzingen

Rokokotheater

Berlin

Radialsystem V

Force & Freedom: Concert Various

Public

Concert

Approved

Vom 14. bis zum 17. April zeigen Nico and the Navigators endlich ihre Berlin-Premiere von „Force & Freedom - Beethoven zwischen Zwang und Freiheit“…

Concert Various

“All my notes don’t get me out of trouble, and I write notes because of trouble quite generally.“ Ludwig van Beethoven

What does it mean to appropriate Beethoven’s last works with all one’s senses? How much courage does it take to get involved in strong emotions, pain and loss, longing and love, anger and hope? And how have these feelings changed in the here and now? How do they relate to our current experiences? 

With the works Opus 59, No. 3 Finale, Dankgesang, Opus 135 as well as the Große Fuge, Nico and the Navigators, together with the Kuss Quartet, have set out on a search for traces of the composer’s 250th birthday – from historical sources to their own present.

The work, whose title “Force & Freedom” varies the motto borrowed from the fugue, “tantôt libre, tantôt recherchée” (“partly free, partly strict”), was overshadowed by a radical change of reality shortly after rehearsals began: Not only did the Corona Pandemic make it necessary to cancel the world premiere at the Schwetzinger Festspiele 2020, but the ensembles’ joint work was also unthinkable for the foreseeable future. Suddenly, the words force and freedom, which were originally meant to outline above all the coordinates in Beethoven’s life, became a direct experience for all those involved. How should dancers, singers, musicians and performers meet in the future in a confined space? How would the audience fit into such a situation?

It was not yet foreseeable at that time that almost all independent artists would be faced with the same economic constraints that once affected a composer like Ludwig van Beethoven himself. First and foremost, it was all about the hardly bearable distance, the isolation and prevention of work that was dependent on exchange.

Nico and the Navigators, together with the Kuss Quartet, made a virtue of this necessity by countering the threatening resignation with small messages from the shared present in the isolation.

The result was – a crisis diary in digital space, which in the end came together in a memory game as a lasting memory. Of course, all participants were painfully aware that these virtual encounters could not offer a full substitute for direct artistic exchange. But an example of insight regarding the necessity was provided by Beethoven’s String Quartet Opus 135, of all pieces. In the fourth movement, under the title “The Difficult Decision”, two motti are found there, which mark individual parts as a game between rebellion and surrender: Grave, ma non troppo tratto (“Must it be?”) and Allegro (“It must be!”).

So if “Force & Freedom” now takes on real form, this mixture of defiance and insight should be considered – not only with Beethoven in mind, but also as a field of tension in which our own contemporary society must constantly reorient itself.

English

Force & Freedom by Various, De (2022/2022), Dirigit per Nicola Hümpel,, Director musical Nicola Hümpel, Radialsystem V, Berlin, Germany

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