14.00 Uhr
Espresso-Konzert
من أجل الحب – For the sake of love
June 2, 2023Share
On 9 June, "من أجل الحب - For the sake of love" tells musical stories about diverse longings and feelings of love. In this community project, Arabic love songs and dances meet Mendelssohn's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" music.
We always return to Mendelssohn's incidental music, which was premiered here in 1843 in what was then the Schauspielhaus am Gendarmenmarkt, when we dream our way through the Berlin summer night - whether of a spring meadow in Azerbaijan (Bakhtcha Kurd) or a wild belly dance party in Egypt (Leylet Hob).
"Rejoice my heart and sing to it melodies of love" we hear Umm Kulthum sing in "Efrah Ya Elby" and follow her voice. But this "Thousand and One Nights" (Alf Layla wa Layla) is not only about love in the romantic sense (Bint al Shalabiya) Longing memories of beloved places lost to war and displacement also rise up. With Fairuz we invoke the wind and dream ourselves "for the sake of love" to a place of security.
"Oh, wind, for love's sake, take me home" (Fairuz in "Nassam Alayna El Hawa").
"Every time I hear the song 'One Thousand and One Nights' by Umm Kulthum, her music takes me to the old gates of love, the gates that were brutally closed. Longing remained trapped in memory. Umm Kulthum's voice takes me to our small house in Aleppo, the scent of summer wafting on the open terrace. The flowering jasmine bush climbs up our balcony and the neighbour's balcony. There is the scent of oranges and the lady's voice sounds from the radio: 'It is a sweet night of love with a thousand and one nights...' (...)
Much disappeared under the weight of migration. But the songs we heard back then remain. The music that is connected to every detail of our lives there remains. Whether it's a love story, or a city we failed to reach as we walked the long path of exile. A path that would have been dark had it not been for those songs that lit it up now and then with an old memory."
From Widad Nabi, Songs are small homes in exile. Translated into German by Suleman Taufiq.
With this community project, we continue our successful cooperation with the Al-Farabi Music Academy to bring children and young people from different cultural backgrounds and their families together through music. The Al-Farabi children's choirs with singer Mais Harb, the Syrian-German band SYRIAB and the Konzerthausorchester Berlin conducted by Holly Hyun Choe will come together on stage.
