Jelineks Rechnitz impresses Holland Festival visitors #hf10

 Photo: Chris Vanderburght

It was time for a real theatrical hit on the Holland festival, after the rather lukewarmly received British-American Shakespeares of Sam Mendes' Bridge Project. And clapping it did at Rechnitz of Elfriede Jelinek by the best actors of the Munich Kammerspiele. Karin Veraart from De Volkskrant was deeply impressed:

...Not that Elfriede Jelinek's beautiful language weaving is so direct and unambiguous, or that Jossi Wieler's direction immediately pushes towards a conclusion. But his staging of Jelinek's Rechnitz at the Munich Kammerspiele has a menacing charge from the outset.

Without, by the way, becoming really clear according to her, the piece does fascinate:

With this exciting, intensely intriguing alliance of language and theatre, Jelinek, Wieler and the Kammerspiele's beautifully acting actors will keep you glued to your seat for two hours.

Parool critic Simon van den Berg is also touched by Jelinek's piece about a hushed-up mass murder by Austrian notables, two days before the end of WW2. He does feel distance:

The problem, though, is that while Jelinek's language, full of puns, offender logic and references to Nazi slogans, is virtuosic, it is also difficult to translate. And perhaps a performance like this is just not that relevant in a country where the greatest virtue is not silence but 'saying what you think'.

At NRC Handelsblad Kester Freriks describes the evening, concluding that it was all pretty special:

Dhese ominous acts and Jelinek's flood of language make Rechnitz into a dark, often unfathomable yet hypnotic piece.

The message elsewhere on the art page, that snake populations are in the danger zone, on reflection did not refer to the scenes from Euripides' Bacchantes cited in the piece, but was a scientific message, as art and science make do with one page together.

At Wed, which may not be quoted, reviewer Hanny Alkema finds that this Rechnitz hits much more aptly and harshly than the Dutch Jelinek's shown earlier this season (About Animals by Het Nationale Toneel and Underground by NTGent).

Meanwhile, in the Zaha Hadid pavilion in the Gashouder of Amsterdam's Westergasfabriek, Volkskrant journalist Lonneke Regter heard quite a lot of hammering, beeping and pounding at the concert by Belgian pianist Frederik Croene. In her article, she gives an interesting explanation of the term 'squeak-grunt music', without incidentally attaching any value judgment to it:

Curious is Poil palliatif for piano frame, part of Croene's series Le piano démécanisé for dismantled buffet piano. On the piano frame, which looks like a workbench with accompanying construction lamp, the pianist produces ominous scratching and sawing sounds over ten minutes with the help of electronic effects. They produce chills like in a thriller.

By the way, she is extremely pleased with the ending of the concert:

A fine maverick turned out to be Après la pluie by Bart Vanhecke (1964). Beautifully contrasted silence before the storm with flood and brightening; a balance of drama and construction that is long-lasting.