On August 31, 1928, the premiere of The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill took place in Berlin, which made musical theater a platform for political struggle and became a symbol of the brilliant and tragic flowering of German culture in the 1920s. The story of the charming killer and leader of the London raiders Macky the Knife was “born of an era that took away from man all the guarantees of truth and reliability that had hitherto existed. The main object of Brecht’s attack is art that creates and instills illusions”: this is how theater critic Olga Fedyanina formulated the creative credo of the authors of “The Threepenny Opera”.

he central role in the fight against illusions is given to Weill’s orchestra: its signature anti-academic, uncompromisingly tough sound was first patented in “Threepenny”, where cabaret winds, banjo and piano are busy mockingly debunking the musical myths of the past – from baroque polyphony to romantic opera.

In 1934, shortly after the fall of the Weimar Republic, Anton Webern begins work on an orchestral version of the six-voice ricercar from the Musical Offering. The melodic line of the original is divided between the instruments of the chamber orchestra, so that each note receives its own timbre – Webern translates Bach into the language of his time, creating a masterpiece of musical pointillism. Each sound, each chord is isolated from each other, the connections between them are not too strong: Webern’s orchestration with its kaleidoscopic flickering of shades turns Bach’s text into a musical cast of the disintegrating fabric of reality of the 1930s.

In 1942, Webern’s teacher Arnold Schoenberg composed “Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte” for reader, string quartet and piano – Lord Byron’s text (1814), directed against tyrannical power, becomes the occasion not just for an angry anti-fascist pamphlet, but for a furious statement about the collapse of humanistic civilization , about disappointment in a person, in his meaning and purpose.

In 1989, the voice of the reader (this time accompanied by a chamber orchestra) again sounds in the work “Nietzsche Speaks” by Louis Andriessen: its Russian premiere summarizes the plots and motives of the first concert of the “What is modern?” series. Using the texts of the philosopher, whom his descendants declared the godfather of the 20th century, the Dutch composer sums up the preliminary artistic results of the past century, while simultaneously reflecting on his favorite topics: the place of the artist in society, the reconciliation of the polarized worlds of “serious” music and “low genres”, and the fate of the musical avant-garde and whether it is possible, to paraphrase Godard, to write music “politically.”

Program

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) – Anton Webern (1883–1945) Fugue (ricercata) from the Musical Offering BWV 1079 (1742–1749/1935) for chamber orchestra

Kurt Weill (1900–1950) “Little Threepenny Music” (1928) for brass band

Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) “Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte” (1942) for reader, piano and string quartet

Louis Andriessen (1939–2021) “Nietzsche redet” (1989, first performance in Russia) for reader, winds, two pianos and strings