In zarter Bewegung

There are pretzels everywhere. I'm waiting for the S-Bahn, pretzel, .60; waiting for the Scharoun Ensemble Berlin, pretzel, 1.50; leaving the concert, after taking a picture of Pierre Boulez taking his seventh straight curtain call, pretzel again, 2.50. I like to imagine that Pierre, after a long day of rehearsing musicians, comes back to his dressing room, sees it full of pretzels and Pilsner and, c'est la vie, digs into those carbohydrates; he has to get into the Teutonic mindset for this one, after all.

Is Pilsner the same as Lager? Heineken is Lager, Javel is Pilsner, but Carlsburg is "Pilsner Lager." As they get closer to Pilsner, I start to like them a bit more, until finally, with Javel, it's a bit enjoyable. Sounds like a debate for a certain German Enlightenment thinker--a Critique of Pure Pilsners. It's really a spectrum, after all--the common-sense answer only nullifies the question. The question being "Is this beer good?" and the common-sense answer being "It's the only beer here."

I hope you don't mind all this blogging. I just have no one to speak to, even though everyone speaks English. I found a club or lounge (guidebook, also walked by it) called Delicious Doughnuts that's nearby, so they're spinning Funk/Soul music tonight. Really, I've got nothing else to do.

The concert, though, was absolutely incredible. Boulez is so understated as a conductor--no large arm-waving, no closing his eyes and pounding his feet--he is not the spectacle to watch that he is to listen to. Yet, at its best (Schoenberg's Kammersymphonie No. 1, op. 9) the small 15-musician ensemble was a unit, and the lyricism--not something you'd expect from either Boulez or Schoenberg--exploded. Alban Berg's Sieben Fruhe Lieder were good too, and the soloist took three or four bows, but it was more due to Berg's unsurpassed (imho) talent at writing for voice than due to any extraordinary interpretation. Still, the beginning of his third Lieder, Die Nachtigall, was something else entirely, as the piano hits a single note and everything just expands from that, gloriously.

The highlight of the entire night, which almost brought me to tears, had nothing to do with Pierre Boulez. It was the only thing he didn't conduct, because it was Anton Webern's Funf Satze fur Streichquartett, op. 5. String quartets are never (I think this is a safe instance of "never") conducted. At its best, it's like hearing a soloist with eight arms and four hearts. I almost said four brains there, but it's way, way funnier to say hearts. Really, though, there is one brain, the quartet. They will rehearse together, travel together, and therefore have to put up with each other. So, Webern. All funf Satze were pretty excellent, but the last, In zarter Bewegung (I asked the guy sitting next to me, I was just too shaken, "In tender movement") is really where it's at. It's just something else. I can't say much else about it. Go find it on YouTube or something, opus 5.

In other news, I asked a man in German if this train went to Potsdamer Platz and he just responded in a full stream of German, said he wasn't sure which train went there, and pulled out a map to help me. I didn't really understand any of it, but the German just made me so happy, as in, am I faking the accent right? I do have a shaved head now, and people have asked me for directions a couple times since I've been here. So, something to think about. Learning German, I mean.