What did all the poor concert halls do that they were bombarded by meteorites from space in Moritz Rinke's new piece “A man who called himself Beethoven”? A boulder hits the Berlin Philharmonic, where the house orchestra has just rehearsed and is now threatened with collapse. Later you hear about further impacts in the world's metropolises via the radio. New York's Carnegie Hall has to believe in it too. Will this, by whatever cosmic power, finally do what the composer Pierre Boulez once dreamed of in a pleasant fantasy of destruction in relation to the opera houses: to simply blow them up with all their tradition, which only seemed to him to be a burden? Or was Rinke just looking for a fast flight connection,to shoot Ludwig van Beethoven into today's world? Stuttering (presumably with shock) he sits on the rubble of the Berlin Philharmonic, having apparently ridden the meteorite like Baron Munchausen on a cannonball.
The "man who called himself Beethoven", now premiered at the Neukölln Opera in Berlin, is a chamber comedy in which heavy artillery is brought up.
Tied to the stereotype of the revolutionary composer, he must also be presented here as the revolutionary of our day.
His demeanor is not berserk.
Christian Kerepeszki plays this Beethoven as a sensitive and empathetic one who likes to listen well and - hardly a few words have been exchanged - falls in love with the violist who has just been released from the orchestra and who takes care of him.
This Beethoven only gets loud when he is supposed to be sent to the doctor because he is mistaken for a man who has run away from a nursing home.
Far-away interpretation of orchestral reality
And when it comes to the tenth symphony, which was being rehearsed by the orchestra at the time of the meteorite impact, completed (premiered in October) with the help of artificial intelligence. Then the composer releases all his holy anger, which soon extends to the sponsor who made the project possible. It was like in his time: Instead of the nobility with its financial possibilities on the one hand and the demands of the artists on the other, large corporations have now taken the place. Everything the same as before! Perhaps this may apply to the funding of culture in the US, which is almost entirely private; this hardly applies to the financing model in this country with strong government support. Quite possible,that Rinkes Beethoven did not notice this while circling in space before he sat on the meteor.
In contrast to what is presented to the composer in Berlin as orchestral reality, one wonders whether Moritz Rinke and his co-author (and director) Mathias Schönsee have spent the last few years in a similarly distant orbit.
Clara, Beethoven's helper and soon the star of the eye, is dismissed from her orchestra, the Berliner Philharmoniker, because she is committed to opening up the ensemble to a new audience and creating a more inviting appearance.
What would Beethoven say?
The orchestra, on the other hand, is headed by a despot as chief conductor who is hated by the musicians and whose ridiculous pomposity (Hansa Czypionka can actually give him a funny side) would be dealt with by the real Philharmonic with a casual spade. The image of the orchestra, the name of which is used here, is as grotesquely unworldly as the efforts to paint the image of a high culture in an ivory tower that is acidic in encrusted structures. For that you also need the “old white man” Clara (Maya Alban-Zapata) sees on every corner: in the conductor, in the colleagues and in the composers, too, of course, who all stand on a pedestal. One notices quickly: Rinke's judgments about the “high culture” are firm and cannot be shaken by facts.Or to put it another way: His resentments are so rancid that they stink into space.
Beethoven, who flew into Berlin from this very space, would now write electronically intensified music and would not shy away from heavy techno beats.
Ketan Bhatti, Cymin Samawatie and Niko Meinhold came up with this music, the Trickster Orchestra plays it with the exotic colors of the Chinese mouth organ and Japanese zither.
We are meanwhile wondering what Beethoven would have said about the piece if he had ridden by on a meteorite in Berlin-Neukölln.