2022. 12. 17 Sat

With no thought of buying the eye is sportive and generous in Käthe Wohlfahrt. Everything seems accidentally but miraculously sprinkled with beauty, but only for three nights. Or so writes Woolf.

Noticing for the first time the hollow of the rose window then, a short walk to the Gedächtniskirche and the surrounding Christmas market: it’s big and full of tourists. Momentarily we are part of them whirling slowly around the hollow for some bratwurst, potato pancakes and candied grapes sparkling like rubies on a stick.

The night is at the Philharmonie again, for the much-anticipated programme by Thielemann. He is charismatic and charming with his exceptionally long and graceful baton, exhaustively dedicated and excruciatingly precise. And delivers serene excerpts from Parsifal, mother’s favourite Four Last Songs, the royal finale with Bach’s Es-Dur Präludium und Fuge arranged by Schönberg... the whole audience is enraptured including us, erupting with the thunder of applause, whistling fanatically and calling out bravos. He knows he is a genius and a star and how to please his fans. Deeply impressed I think to myself, with music like his he ought to. On our journey home we are still too excited and have to speak out what rare glittering music it was. To describe it I must again quote Woolf: everything seemed accidentally but miraculously sprinkled with beauty, only this time this is no accident and painfully instantaneous, as lasting as a bell’s chime - thus the beauty the beautifulest, the joy the joyfulest.