Europe is Europe.

Tonight I walked to Karlskirche for a chamber concert. All the musicians are from my tiny town Zweibrücken, names never heard, but their superb performance and charming temperament conquered me entirely. I start to believe nowadays so-called fame is a result of marketing, especially when it comes to music/art. I love this tiny town so much more after this concert. It’s not that I never had any live concerts. Quite the contrary, I grew up with classmates playing violins, violoncellos, pianos and other instruments (western and/or Chinese) around and my high school was the first high school which had student orchestra in my province. For a few years I myself was singing western chorus works or playing my instrument in rehearsals several times a week. The Chinese American pianist Xiang-Dong Kong once came to my college to give speech/performance and I was there. Yo-Yo Ma and Lang-Lang’s performances are just familiar through CDs and TV programmes….But never did I have such soulful/beautiful musical experience before.

The first piece was Brahms’ Trio H-Dur op. 8, 1. Satz Allegro con brio. Mr. Martin Ruppert, the violin player, tall and thin, looked shy. The notes flowing out of his fingers were simply seductive. No big body movements or exaggerating expressions on face, he was rather implicit and well, the music was simply delicate and seductive. I call it temperament. The performance and demeanour of the violoncello player Mr. Joachim Köhler was gorgeous. Let’s not talk about technical thing, in tonight’s concert I just felt all the technical things faded away, sheer beauty of music and tender emotion haunting around….It was just elegant temperament. Europe is Europe. Please accept my adoration. I never really liked Brahms but their performance definitely opened my new door to Brahms.

Then the mezzo soprano Ms Susanne Ludwig-Theisohn sang Arie “Holdes Echo” from J. S. Bach’s “Die Wahl des Herakles” BWV 213. (Echo: Ms Ina Buhr). Very solid yet gentle mid range. Again, implicit and controlled. Quite noble in my ears.

Things became a little bit dramatic when the flute player Mr. Nicole Wagner started Gabriel Faure’s “Fantasie e-moll”. It was a beautiful piece, and Mr. Wagner’s dance was elegant too.

The Dvorak they played was “Dumky-Trio” Op. 90. 4. Satz “Die Uhr” Andante moderato. I hoped for Dvorak’s Op. 96, but still greatly enjoyed Mr. Ruppert, Mr. Köhler and Mr. Klaus Bernhard Roth’s performance. Dvorak is not really that easy to interpret. His untrammelled passion is too easy to be turned out rather simple and coarse. These three gentlemen did a great job. The heat was certainly there but everything was under control, not countrysideman-like. Very European.

The concert ended with Brahms’ Kalviertrio H-Dur Op. 90, 4. Satz: Finale, Allegro. All the musicians were highly acclaimed then. I walked home in a dreamy mood.

Till now the music is still haunting. What a beautiful night I had had and what a lovely tiny town I am living in!

The Karlskirche has an excellent acoustic characteristic for chamber music (better than the Fruchthalle in Kaiserslautern, IMHO), that definitely helped the concert sound more charming. It should be suitable for a wedding too (suppose the music in the wedding is chamber music too….no, Karlskirche is not really for Wanger’s massive works). I’m seriously considering looking for a local man so that maybe I can have my wedding there and attend concerts there as many times as I want to.