MUSIC
REVIEW Academie keeps nutty side in check -- sort of Fire, flair and daredevil
virtuosity from Academie für Alte Musik Berlin at Royce Hall. by Mark Swed,
Times Staff Writer Forget the stuffy name. Academie für Alte Musik
Berlin is early music’s Bang on a Can All Stars. And forget the creaky old
instruments too. Kinky, quirky, quick, these staggeringly good players have a
taste for the offbeat. In fact, one of their terrific recent Harmonia Mundi
albums is titled “La Bizarre.” No table music this, it is the oddball other side
of Telemann. Who knew? Completing its much-belated first American tour at Royce
Hall on Wednesday night, the Academy was on its best behavior for UCLA Live in
that the music it chose was relatively safe, relatively tame, big-name Baroque —
Bach, Handel, Vivaldi. Not until the end was there a concerto by Francesco
Geminiani’s that got a bit nutty. But no matter. Everything was played with
fire, flair, a hard percussive ferocity and daredevil virtuosity. There was
nothing dainty about these 17 gut-strung string instruments, honky woodwinds,
tinkly harpsichord and lute. They made a surprisingly big, even raucous sound. I
would like to see what might happen if someone were to dress the players a
little better (they try with their red and black outfits but don’t quite make
it), mike them, put them on a stadium stage and amplify them really loud. The
Academy is a collective that started 23 years ago in East Berlin as a rebellion
against the stiflingly traditional musical life imposed by the government.
Berlin may have some of the world’s best antiquarian museums, but the city, East
or West, has never been in the forefront of the early music movement. Think Bach
and Berlin, and Herbert von Karajan’s super lush Berlin Philharmonic
sugarcoating is probably what first comes to mind. These Berliners’ Bach on
Wednesday was driven to the edge or otherwise unhinged. Georg Kallweit and
Midori Seiler gave the Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor an almost cabaret
seductiveness to the solos. Meanwhile the Suite in C was about as boisterous as
Bach can get. Here the violinist Stephan Mai was the leader. He has close
cropped hair and a long, gray Sigmund Freud beard. But it was Walt Whitman, an
old poet willing to lose himself in dance and the senses, who kept coming to
mind, as Mai stomped, crouched, swayed, wiggled and other wise rocked ‘n’
rolled, all the while enticing playing of exceptional accuracy and rhythmic
excitement at madcap tempos from the band. The concert began with a suite from a
rare, early Handel opera, “Almira,” wonderfully lithe and colored. A Vivaldi
concerto for two oboes had sweet, wry solos from Xenia Löffler and Michael
Bosch. But it wasn’t until the last piece, Geminiani’s Concerto Grosso No. 12,
that the Academy finally started to reveal its true inner strangeness. This is a
set of variations on the traditional “mad” theme, follia (the Academy seems to
have a fixation with the theme and has dug up esoteric uses of it in its most
recent CD of obscure opera overtures). Mad the playing was too. At the
performance’s most deranged, violinists in the back banged (and not lightly) on
their instruments with the wood of their bows. I have my doubts that Baroque
period performances were nearly so radical. You have to live in today’s world,
and probably in Berlin, to come up with playing this avant-garde.
Los Angeles Times
MUSIC
REVIEW Academie keeps nutty side in check -- sort of Fire, flair and daredevil
virtuosity from Academie für Alte Musik Berlin at Royce Hall. by Mark Swed,
Times Staff Writer Forget the stuffy name. Academie für Alte Musik
Berlin is early music’s Bang on a Can All Stars. And forget the creaky old
instruments too. Kinky, quirky, quick, these staggeringly good players have a
taste for the offbeat. In fact, one of their terrific recent Harmonia Mundi
albums is titled “La Bizarre.” No table music this, it is the oddball other side
of Telemann. Who knew? Completing its much-belated first American tour at Royce
Hall on Wednesday night, the Academy was on its best behavior for UCLA Live in
that the music it chose was relatively safe, relatively tame, big-name Baroque —
Bach, Handel, Vivaldi. Not until the end was there a concerto by Francesco
Geminiani’s that got a bit nutty. But no matter. Everything was played with
fire, flair, a hard percussive ferocity and daredevil virtuosity. There was
nothing dainty about these 17 gut-strung string instruments, honky woodwinds,
tinkly harpsichord and lute. They made a surprisingly big, even raucous sound. I
would like to see what might happen if someone were to dress the players a
little better (they try with their red and black outfits but don’t quite make
it), mike them, put them on a stadium stage and amplify them really loud. The
Academy is a collective that started 23 years ago in East Berlin as a rebellion
against the stiflingly traditional musical life imposed by the government.
Berlin may have some of the world’s best antiquarian museums, but the city, East
or West, has never been in the forefront of the early music movement. Think Bach
and Berlin, and Herbert von Karajan’s super lush Berlin Philharmonic
sugarcoating is probably what first comes to mind. These Berliners’ Bach on
Wednesday was driven to the edge or otherwise unhinged. Georg Kallweit and
Midori Seiler gave the Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor an almost cabaret
seductiveness to the solos. Meanwhile the Suite in C was about as boisterous as
Bach can get. Here the violinist Stephan Mai was the leader. He has close
cropped hair and a long, gray Sigmund Freud beard. But it was Walt Whitman, an
old poet willing to lose himself in dance and the senses, who kept coming to
mind, as Mai stomped, crouched, swayed, wiggled and other wise rocked ‘n’
rolled, all the while enticing playing of exceptional accuracy and rhythmic
excitement at madcap tempos from the band. The concert began with a suite from a
rare, early Handel opera, “Almira,” wonderfully lithe and colored. A Vivaldi
concerto for two oboes had sweet, wry solos from Xenia Löffler and Michael
Bosch. But it wasn’t until the last piece, Geminiani’s Concerto Grosso No. 12,
that the Academy finally started to reveal its true inner strangeness. This is a
set of variations on the traditional “mad” theme, follia (the Academy seems to
have a fixation with the theme and has dug up esoteric uses of it in its most
recent CD of obscure opera overtures). Mad the playing was too. At the
performance’s most deranged, violinists in the back banged (and not lightly) on
their instruments with the wood of their bows. I have my doubts that Baroque
period performances were nearly so radical. You have to live in today’s world,
and probably in Berlin, to come up with playing this avant-garde.