Culture tips and favorites of the week: Greetings to the Patriarchy – Culture

Movie: Feminism WTF

Katharina Mückstein shows that nothing is “done” in feminism in her documentary “Feminism WTF” – a quick introduction to academic feminism, enlightening and entertaining. Mückstein brought a number of clever women in front of her camera. Scientists analyze the power relations in Germany and represent a feminism that thinks racism, classism, sexism and capitalism together. The director staged it in a pop-cool way and had her interviewees make their statements in colorfully styled empty office rooms. Queer performance sequences or experimental arrangements are mounted in between. Talking heads and talking bodies: “All knowledge is embodied knowledge,” says one of the scientists. “If certain bodies are missing, the knowledge related to that body is missing.” Martina Knoben

Pop: “Bipolar Feminin” on tour

Oh, finally anger again, finally a bit of a sense of mission and traces of “Your life is not for me – and how should it be, it’s disgusting”. Great band name too: Bipolar Feminine, a quartet from Austria, streetwise Viennese indie pop punk, but not as much insult and well-cultivated sensuality as one now imagines. The whole thing is harder and about as compact and humorous as cobblestones. On the album “A Fragile System,” frontwoman Leni Ulrich sings songs about being stupid and talking too loudly, about “attractive products” and “what it is like.” Current favorite line: “Fuck yourself in the knee, Elbphilharmonie.” The band will be on tour until the end of September: for example in Munich on September 14th, in Frankfurt on the 17th, in Potsdam on the 19th and at the Reeperbahn Festival (20th-23rd) too. Jacob Biazza

Classical: The pianist Yaara Tal

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1923 was a year of upheaval. In Germany, Hitler’s putsch failed, hyperinflation was ended in November, after which the path was clear for the few years of the Roaring Twenties. Art exploded in all directions this year, anything seemed possible. And the wonderful pianist Yaara Tal captures this in an exciting way on her solo album with the simple title “1923” (Sony). She viewed 500 works, played them to herself, and selected a dozen pieces or mini-cycles that were composed in 1923. They had to be short so that she could accommodate as wide a range as possible on one album.

At the center of this exuberant panopticon stands Vienna. Arnold Schönberg invents twelve-tone music, Josef Matthias Hauer does the same, albeit in a completely different way. Hauer’s piano pieces based on the words of Hölderlin are friendly delicacies, notated without any performance markings, Schönberg’s waltz from the piano pieces op. 23 is meticulously constructed expression. Right next to it: Hanns Eisler’s second sonata, next to Ernest Bloch’s “Nirvana” the most modern piece on the album. Eisler first dismantles every tradition, then he begins to play with the rubble, becoming increasingly crazy. Bloch invents a way of letting go of every intention, sounds occur as if by chance – the piece could have been composed now.

Yaara Tal gives everyone the right. Whether Frederick Delius’ longing for the past, Joseph Achron’s decidedly Jewish sound dream, as evoked by Chagall pictures, or the small collection of elegant, super-brilliant miniatures from Paris or Geneva that peek into the salons and jazz clubs: Tal plays everything with the greatest care Have fun with the discoveries. She is at home in every style, in rag-time as well as in the Maschinenhaus. The machine comes from Heautontimorumenos, whose real name was Fritz Heinrich Klein. His Opus 1 (“The Machine”) is the longest piece on the album and the only one in which Andreas Groethuysen is allowed to take part. Tal&Groethuysen are an example of piano duos, which does not challenge Tal’s solo brilliance. The “machine” is now a phenomenal joke, the funniest human machine in the world, as crazy as life itself. Egbert Tholl

Crime: The Queen’s Confidant

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The young woman stands upright, her hands spread out like “Our Lady of Grace”, the young man clings to her skirts and presses his face into the embroidery: “Sauve-moi, Madame”. Mary, Queen of Scots, and her advisor David Rizzio, Holyrood Castle, March 1566 – a wild bunch of armed men have stormed into the dining room, they want to kill Rizzio. “Rizzio” is the name of Denise Mina’s new book (in the original, in German it is called “The Queen’s Confidant”). Mina has previously written tough crime novels from the gang world of Glasgow, this is a crazy historical miniature, bloody and dirty, from a politically and religiously torn country. Mary’s husband Darnley has his own nasty ideas about the future, he stands right at her side and – the queen is six months pregnant – brutally squeezes her abdomen, where he thinks the child will be… Fritz Goettler

Jazz: The jam session is back

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Ever since pianist Thelonious Monk’s house band at Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem began attracting young pioneers like Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker in 1940, jam sessions have played a key role in modern jazz. Beyond their commitments, the musicians were free to do whatever they wanted. Since the 1970s, Sundays in the Unterfahrt jazz club have served as a hub for the scene in Munich. There is now a new generation of musicians and audiences for whom jam sessions lower the entry threshold. For the musicians, because the new sessions convey the spirit of togetherness rather than of competition. For the audience, because they can spend a club evening with great music for little or no money. In the new “Live/Evil” in the former Gasteig, for example, the “Funky Drummer” Guido May leads the session. And with a bit of luck, musicians of all caliber can compete with greats like keyboardist André Schwager, trumpeter Vincent Eberle or saxophonist Michael Hornstein. It’s worth it. For all. Andrian Kreye