Favorites of the week: Words like witchcraft – culture

Crime: “The City of the Living”

A few days and nights, stuffed full of vodka and cocaine, sex and travesty, and then, on Friday, March 4, 2016, the murder happens: Two middle-class boys kill a young rent boy, apparently for no reason, with a knife and hammer. An incredible act, Italy is shocked. In “The City of the Living” (German by Verena von Koskull), Nicola Lagioia tells of this true crime case – the families of the perpetrators, the investigations, the reactions of the press. A thriller of disturbing consequence, about identity, social and sexual, and the story of journalistic research that sometimes has to take refuge in the banal: what is that, evil? And, in the Pasolini tradition, an incredibly dense portrait of the eternally restless city of Rome, from the rats of the Colosseum to Michelangelo’s Moses and Dalida’s “Ciao amore, ciao”. Words are ambiguous, fleeting, “cousins ​​of witchcraft,” they say, “resonate differently when encountering different materials.” Fritz Goettler

Journalism: The War Reports of the ISW

A disclaimer first: There are more sympathetic institutions than the Institute for the Study of War. The Washington think tank was founded by Kimberly Kagan, a military historian from the neocon milieu, and is supported by American arms companies, among others. Nonetheless, there is hardly a more influential source of news on the progress of the war in Ukraine than the “Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment” published daily by the ISW. With tireless accuracy, the authors describe the progress of the fighting and the intrigues in the Russian army leadership. They meticulously spread the criticism of Russia’s influential “milbloggers” who were always dissatisfied with the course of the war on Telegram.

The ISW authors cannot be said to be impartial. A Cold War vibe wafts through the often bone-dry lines. But the reporters know full well that it is the sobriety and precision of presentation that makes their reports so valuable. They are not subject to the usual journalistic economy of attention. They are more like military situation reports, hence the technocratic style. The general public eventually tires of the horrifying, ongoing issues of this war and turns to others. Not so the authors of the ISW. Since Ukrainian children are abducted to Russia every day, they make a note of this every day, even if the wording always remains the same. And if apart from “limited engagement” nothing happens on this or that front section, then just write it down, day after day.

Instead of impatiently looking for the grand narrative, where perhaps there just isn’t one – “the counter-offensive is really starting now”, “the counter-offensive is collapsing” – the ISW experts stoically measure the course of the front every day, literally meter by meter. To do this, they link photos from social media together with their geodata, media reports and whatever other sources they can tap into. According to its own statements, the ISW does not receive any intelligence information. It relies solely on the enormous expertise of its employees. On their willingness not to take their eyes off the horrible war events. Jörg Haentzschel

Classic: Hermann Scherchen’s Mahler symphonies

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The legend that it was Leonard Bernstein who first forced the Vienna Philharmonic to embrace Gustav Mahler’s symphonies is hardly tenable when you listen to the recordings with conductor Hermann Scherchen from the 1950s (Urania). Certainly Scherchen puts on much less effective ramp theater, but Mahler’s symphonic music demonstrates his love of detail in architecture and sound formation as naturally as it does in a spacious way. The real polyphony, the equal simultaneity of the voices, which is often neglected in today’s performances, also gains a unique profile in Scherchen. You can rely on the solid, warm string body, but this time the wind instruments also hear and think along. An amazing document. Helmut Mauro

Pop: Album “No. 2” by Erobique

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Among the much too unknown German indie pop heroes, the Hamburg pianist, keyboard player, songwriter and producer Carsten Meyer aka Erobique is the eternal disco dream dancer. Even the most pathetic stuttering and stumbling gets a hip swing from him. But not in such a strained, boastful, German way, rather in a very easily deceived way, a small twist so that everything is no longer so difficult. Whereby the secret is not the irony, but the warmth. Incidentally, the final stroke of genius on his new album “No. 2” (Hanseplatte) is the song to the line “We’ve screwed up everything / we’ve messed everything up”. Should the world be saved one day after all, that must be the opener of the soundtrack. Jens Christian Rabe

Concert: Fliessen Festival

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Marie-Elisabeth Hecker and Martin Helmchen, the cellist and pianist, are among the most sought-after, internationally active classical music soloists: Chicago, London, Oslo or Tokyo – they always stay close to themselves. The couple moved from Berlin with their four children to the countryside, to southern Brandenburg, to the Spreewald with its rivers, streams and rivulets. So they call their festival “Fliessen”.

The place Bornsdorf is a collection of houses between meadows and fields. The old “Drauschemühle”, their house with a large garden, has a barn that becomes a concert hall when Hecker and Helmchen play music there with friends. For listeners, they say, “who are suspicious of the dress codes and unwritten rules of conduct at a classical concert”. In addition to idealism, there was the good fortune of being able to integrate the festival organizationally into the “Brandenburg Summer Concerts”. Neighboring towns become venues for the Fliessen Festival, churches in Luckau and Lübben, Lübbenau Castle. In Finsterwalde, civic commitment has turned the old weaving mill into a perfect concert hall. The marathon concert there: Martin Helmchen and Christian Tetzlaff immerse Beethoven’s Violin Sonata in C minor in torn emotions. Helmchen, Hecker and the violinist Stephen Waarts let the most brittle artistic exercise shine in Brahms’ C major piano trio. Mendelssohn Bartholdy’s ingenious octet for strings brings together half the circle of friends on the podium.

Music means understanding flow as an exercise in art – here in a family atmosphere, in changing casts of fifteen top-class instrumentalists. They can even clearly explain their music, also by modern composers, in audience discussions. In the crowded concert barn there are Robert Schumann’s three romances and his piano quintet, this time with Michail Lifits on the piano, followed by the celebration of countless encores of the most beautiful and rarest kind, such as Paganini’s fifth violin Caprice as a devilish absurdity – for flute and bassoon. Wolfgang Schreiber