Favorites of the week: Brahms and chickens – culture

Podcast: Chickens in Literature

Rome is going under – and the emperor is raising chickens. The end of the empire he despises is only right for Romulus, so he does not oppose the Germans. Let the world think what it wants of him. Rolf Cantzen begins his glorious, Feuilleton “The pecking catastrophe” available as a podcast at DLF Kultur: If chickens appear in literature, someone often loses their feathers, threatens decay, ruin, misfortune, death. Cantzen finds many examples, including Virginia Woolf (“Orlando”), Mikhail Bulgakov (“The Cursed Eggs”), Luigi Malerba (“The Pensive Chickens”) and, of course, Wilhelm Busch (“Max and Moritz”). Although, it has to be said, the chickens themselves are hardly to blame for all the decline around them. Stephen Fisher

A partially fictional novel: “The boldest plan in living memory”

Herman Sörgel, an architect who lived in Munich until his mysterious death in an accident in 1952, is one of the great fantasists. Under the name “Atlantropa” he planned gigantic dams and hydroelectric power plants in the Mediterranean Sea, which he would have lowered by up to 200 meters to connect Africa and Europe. From Berlin you could have taken the train to Cape Town. Sörgel just wanted everything: to pacify the world that was still staring at the ruins of the First World War; conquer hunger; and replace fossil fuels. What a pity, one thinks today with the new gas bill in hand, that Sörgel was never taken seriously. which is wrong. Because the author Matthias Lohre has thought of Herman Sörgel and his Jewish wife, it is the art dealer Irene Villanyi, with a partly fictitious, partly biographical, but entirely brilliant novel: “The boldest plan since living memory” has been published by Verlag Wagenbach (480 pages, 26 Euro). It is almost frightening how a love and technology story from the past condenses into the pure present: Ultimately, it is about the energy, climate and geopolitical crises of our time. Sörgel was a seer. Gerhard Matzig

Classic: Swinging Brahms

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Some claim that the string sextet is a kind of exploded string quartet, more complicated in texture, more orchestral in tonal effect. If at all, this is only true with the two sextets that Johannes Brahms wrote and which, along with Peter Tchaikovsky’s “Souvenirs de Florences”, have become the most famous pieces of the genre, not forgetting Arnold Schönberg’s “Transfigured Night”. It goes without saying that there are sextets in various combinations in jazz.

The history of the string sextet begins in the 18th century with Luigi Boccherini. But it is the sextets op. 18 and op. 36 that the young Brahms composed that defined the genre monumentally, so to speak: wonderfully flowing, swaying music in irresistible swing. Brahms had real and lasting success with it, which the older, bearded gurnard later became suspicious of, he said dismissively of two “sentimental long” pieces. In order to fulfill the instrumentation – two violins, two violas, two cellos – it makes sense to add a viola and cello to the quartet. But it’s not easy to even halfway integrate two strangers into a thoroughly developed and well-established team. That is why there are also famous performances in which six great individual players have come together, for example with the great cellist Pablo Casals or the great violinist Jascha Heifetz.

The fiery Belcea Quartet (Corina Belcea, Axel Schacher, violins; Krzysztof Chorzelski, viola; Antoin Lederlin, cello) has invited the viola queen Tabea Zimmermann and the brilliant cello artist Jean-Guihen Queyras to an enjoyable six (Alpha Classics). Although the two audibly have their own intonation and sound development, a spirited, thoroughly articulated, vital, but not noisy symphonic togetherness has emerged. Sentimental and long, old Brahms grumbled. But the opposite is true when these sextets are played with such a bright timbre and filled with light. Nothing sticks earth-heavy or is weighty in true German, but the pieces become pure celebrations of life and joy. Harold Eggebrecht

Well-hidden comedy series: “Fat and Fat”

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“Fett und Fett” is something like the hidden champion among German comedy series, the second season has been running well hidden in the ZDF media library since this summer. At first glance it’s about Jaksch (Jakob Schreier) and his friends, all in their early thirties in Munich, but at second glance it’s about much more – a search for meaning, urban melancholy, that sort of thing. The dialogues are so realistic that you could hear them at any time in the hallway or at the bus stop. When Jaksch and his girlfriend meet an acquaintance at a vernissage, they say something like this: “Didn’t you think the performance was so wonderful, or what do you as a man from the theater say about it?” – “Yes, uh, very dramatic.” – “Ah, that’s right, you’re in the theater, right? Really cool. I’ve just rediscovered theater for myself. I think it has a completely different status now. Um, I’ll be right back to it you, see you.” The six episodes of the new season have wonderful contemporary titles such as “Somehow already” and “Bit much”. And they’re over so quickly that you want to start all over again. Kathrin Müller-Lance

Art in the home: Wilhelm Klotzek

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If you don’t want to miss anything essential, you have to go to Hamburg these days anyway, where this weekend the International summer festival at Kampnagel starts again, which shouldn’t even be the focus of the recommendation at this point, because that takes care of itself with a look at the, as always, quite bombastic program. But if you are already in the city anyway, please contact [email protected] and make an appointment to view it. Then you can enter the presentation apartment of the Klosterfelde collector couple, where the artist Wilhelm Klotzek has mixed up the more canonical holdings with works from his own generation. For example, the stubborn shack charm of Manfred Pernice’s sculpture from the nineties meets the also strangely cheerful and brittle concrete works by Pernice’s student Marta Dyachenko, which now swim through the old Hamburg apartment building like small barges. And whoever thinks of Isa Genzken at this sight, she suddenly sees: in a photo by Wolfgang Tillmans. It’s a multi-dimensional domino of sense and form that Klotzek laid through the rooms. And that’s why you shouldn’t be surprised if you always get to the works of Klotzek himself relatively quickly from the conceptual humor of John Baldessari or Sigmar Polke. His large “Reclining Woman” dominating the living room is a cigarette, which itself smokes a cigarette very casually. At the same time, of course, it is also a paraphrase of Wieland Förster’s “Große Liegende”, one of East Berlin’s most famous free-standing sculptures. And around Berlin, which is where Klotzek comes from and that’s where most of the other artists live, there’s no getting around in Hamburg either. But at least it’s a more ideal Berlin. In a series of posters for desirable events, Klotzek has imagined, among other things, the most sympathetic event that has been announced for the so-called Humboldt Forum: It invites you to the “Ü-Eier Börse Berlin-Mitte”. And there’s really no reason why reality couldn’t even follow the advice from art. Peter Richter