Rob and MA go on a Date!

Rob and I have kept our sanity by getting out together without kids. This is only possible because of Sarah Reed, our able and willing stand-in. First we did some whine-free shopping, which was essential. Then we tried the Indian place across the street which was yummy and close. After that we saw the Threepenny Opera, which I detailed before. This time we went to see the Brahms Requiem at the Philharmonie, pictured above and below.
The Philharmonie is nicknamed Circus Zarajani, which is the conductor. It is as apt a nickname inside, with multicolored glass walls and floating staircases in every direction, as it is for the tent-like exterior.
Rob and I are big, big Deutsches Requiem fans, having listened to it all the time (it is Rob's kitchen cleaning soundtrack), recommended it for one of his brother Rick's film projects, and seen it performed live in Vienna with the two piano accompaniment (astounding!). We had just heard the Mormon Tabernacle Choir perform "How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place" during General Conference.
I was worried that we wouldn't like this one as much, but we liked it a lot. This conductor emphasized different parts and instruments. Sometimes it almost felt out of control, but then you'd realize they were all together.
It is an amazing work. I think it is a session of therapy in a jewel case. A catharsis on a CD. It has the answers to almost every problem in it somewhere between tracks one and seven. I know it was written in response to the death of Brahms's mother and Clara Schumann, but it is so universal and ecumenical, that I like to believe he tapped into something of the divine to create a requiem dedicated to the German people. As if he knew that they were precisely the people who would need a requiem for national healing. Of course, that wasn't the motivation, but if you listen to it enough, you can be forgiven for feeling that way.
So we give it two thumbs up, from the harps to the bass drums.

Later in the week we got to escape for a couple of hours to visit the Old National Gallery, which houses, um, let's say paintings and some sculpture from the nineteenth century. That sounds close enough. They had some nice impressionists that weren't lilypads or haystacks. They had some great Caspar David Friedrich, but then I found out that he wasn't much of a looker -- I tried to argue to Rob that he had the equivalent of a mullet for his time. Then there were works by Karl Friedrich Schinkel, who turned out to be far better looking. Schinkel is one of Rob's favorite architects/painters/set designers/city planners who just happens to have left his mark all over Berlin. It was just the right size to get through in a few hours, and the museum itself has been recently renovated due to the largesse of sponsors such as KPMG.

We came home and the kids had made a lot of paper money with coin rubbings, so Sarah was teaching them how to bet at one card stud. Maddie and Will loved it, and I figure it's a good skill to have. Unfortunately I didn't bring any face cards, so they'll have to see what they can do with Apples to Apples or the Articles of Faith cards.

Then on Thursday night we went and saw the Artificial Silk Girl or the Kunstseidenes Maedchen. It was a one-woman show in a cool fifties-era lounge, and we enjoyed the setting and the audience as much as anything. All of Rob's students have read this work, which was a bestseller in 1932, and then was one of the first books blacklisted by the Nazis. It has several passages about Berlin and walking in the city, but Rob has found that Doris, the main character and narrator, really resonates with his students. So we went to see this to check it out for student suitability. It was great, and I had only read it in English.

We snacked on peanuts and drank our bitter lemons and listened to Doris talk about all the many men in her life and how they eventually affect her. She's a good-looking but uneducated young thing, and one of her methods of disguising that is to drop a single word (that she doesn't know the meaning of) into a conversation and let it hang there 'like a symbol'. She tries a few out in the book, and one of them is "Ooh la la!" which is the extent of her French.
Coincidentally, Sebastian has started saying it too. Whenever you offer him something exciting or a toy or his favorite food (which right now is cheese and keppitch that he eats together) he says "Ooh la la!" and if you're giving him what he really wants, you get "Ooh la la LA!" I have to admit that I'm willing to go to a little extra effort just to get one more "La" out of him.