Two to one

We expected the second half of the Bach violin and harpsichord/continuo sonatas but Prof Turban was ill. We got one half: harpsichordist Andreas Skouras. It was a great performance and an interesting alternative. He played six pieces, Bach or some influenced by him although I thought the influences got a bit tenuous. No program so no details of pieces, but the composers were Bach, Scheidt, Bach, Ligeti, Bach, [unknown]. The influenced got increasingly modern and increasingly challenging and what a fascination this was on harpsichord. It’s a strangely ill-defined instrument to my ears proven with some heavy hands low on the final piece. But also some quick changes of octaves with the two keyboards and tinkles up high and all at a very moderate volume. I enjoyed all the playing but was stunned by the reading in the final piece: truly virtuosic, managing long intervals, dissonant chords and odd rhythms. Impressive. So very different and unexpected. We finally left by the other staircase, the one that Hitler and Chamberlain and others used at the Munich Agreement and I was confounded by the layout. There was a wall where the external entrance should have been. From the outside, the door is locked: unlit and clearly unused. We descended the staircase with a local woman. I mentioned Hitler’s office and she joked about fear of ghosts returning. There’s an awareness of and repulsion to this history in Germany, not least Munich. By most. Let’s hope it stays that way, in Germany, but no less elsewhere.

Andreas Skouras (harpsichord) played Bach and others at the Hockschule für musik in Munich.

Best and worst of German history

We’ve discovered the local Hockschule für musik, the conservatory, and it’s a shortish walk. A pair of concerts caught out eye: Bach Sämtliche Werke für Violine und Cembalo in 2 sessions, Teil 1 and 2. These were sonatas for violin and harpsichord, played by “the Professor, he could do it in his sleep”, as someone advised us. There are 6 violin and harpsichord sonatas but 18 in all with continuo. They were free and I was amused by some serious josling for seats, but there was plenty of room in the end. First night was 9 sonatas over about 90 minutes. These seriously were decent players. The violin was a stunning, free and expressive and with great technique. I felt a certain excitement in his playing, sometimes uncomfortable with the harpsichord, but willing to add pauses and accels to phrasing. He played a modern bow and I think steel strings, so he was strongly toned but he could drop to the quietest to allow the harpsichord through. The harpsichord is so often lost in a mix and could clearly be subservient under a firm violin, but we heard plenty here. The harpsichord was more ordered than the violin’s take, but that’s inevitable, perhaps, given the role as accompanist and harmonic underlay. Both were wonderful players and could melt your heart with their music. I talked to a post-doc from Belgium in the interval, about the local galleries, jazz, art. His field was painting and social change in ~C15th. But most interesting was what he told me of this building. I had expected these local grand classical buildings would have been bombed in WW2, perhaps leaving shells for reconstruction. Certainly the local Alte Pinacotek was. I was even more surprised when I heard they were Nazi Party headquarters. Munich was the source of Nazism and this was its administrative centre. The Hockschule building was once called the Führerbau. Hitler’s office was accessed from the other entrance which is now locked up. This is the site of the Hitler’s Munich Agreement (1938, “Peace in our time”) with Chamberlain, Deladier and Mussolini that permitted Germany’s occupation of the Sudetenland (Western Czechoslovakia). But no. The Führerbau had survived intact and after the war been used to collect looted art and later used as the American Information Centre. History is close here.

Ingolf Turban (violin) and Andreas Skouras (harpsichord) played the the first half of the complete violin and harpsichord/continuo sonatas in Munich.