Recollections- day 8

Thursday January 24th: bad currywurst for lunch in a dingy chain restaurant, followed by a lot of walking around Hackescher Markt. Jessie and I had a wonderful dinner at the historically significant and wonderfully hidden Tajikistani Tearoom.... calm, cheap, delicious, low tables, no shoes, usw.

Dessert, Jessie

Thursday's concert was definitely a highlight musically speaking. Expectations were low going in, as the Ensemble Modern are well known for their ensemble playing this concert of small chamber and solo pieces seemed somewhat amiss. It ended up being one of the strongest sets of performances as well as the most consistently interesting compositionally. Vito Žuraj's WARM UP for french horn and two percussionists was a thrillingly formless piece, turning slowly through an utterly unique soundscape of quiet, hyperactive material, finding its way to a beautiful coalescence at the end of the piece in the form of a short melodic unison between the horn and bowed vibraphones- the potential banality of the idea transcended in that this final tune only really registered once it had already passed and the piece was finished. Emmanuel Nunes's Aura for solo flute was a similarly exhausting piece, its rapid and varied twisting and turning contrasted with a few lengthy plateaus of flute and voice multiphonics.