Love is one of those things: it comes and goes, or it comes and stays. A lot of drama fits between the courtship and (at best) some kind of happy ending. Art, literature and the cinema screens are full of it, but first the music. That’s what Chiel Meijering’s suite “Kiss of Fire” is all about. The classical band “Spark” played some movements from it together with the Münster Symphony Orchestra in a “Monday Night Music” at the Kleines Haus.
Spark” plays a rocking mix of classical, minimal music, avant-garde and more in a quintet formation with violin, cello, piano and recorders. Borrowings from techno and club music are also welcome. There was a lot going on on stage at the first concert of the season. Contrasts in rhythm and volume traced great passions in a set titled “Love and Hate”. “When Love Comes Knocking”, inspired by African world music, fanned out a great rhythmic variety and range. With everything happening at the same time, the piece could easily pass for a musical description of a busy underground station at rush hour. Huge applause. In “Scotch Club” by Victor Plumettaz, the cellist of “Spark”, the band paid tribute to the beginnings of the DJ tradition with loops. A piece with the eloquent title “Again, Again, Again, Again” works in the style of minimal music with patterns that repeat themselves in ever new compositions.
The symphony orchestra (conductor: Henning Ehlert) enriched the sets with Mediterranean and South American inspired dances around passion and love: movements from Rodion Shchedrin’s “Carmen Suite”, a ballet music for strings and 47 percussion instruments, two of Ottorino Respighi’s “Old Dances and Tunes for Lute”, a tango by Astor Piazzolla and film music by Nino Rota. The band and orchestra received a standing ovation for “Five Senses of Love”, which once again brought the relaxed but at the same time wide-awake music in an unusual instrumentation to the conclusion of the night music.
Composers in the crosshairs of our attention