Ex Bibliotheca

The life and times of Zack Weinberg.

Sunday, 16 November 2003

# 5 AM (GMT+1)

Today we planned to visit the zoo, the museum of modern art, and a performance of Brahms' Deutsche Requiem at the rebuilt Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedäctniskirche. What we actually did was chase all over town after postage stamps, abandon the idea of the zoo, and discover that the Neue Nationalgalerie (which we had thought was the museum of modern art) was in fact a house exclusively for special exhibitions. Further, it was currently showing some complicated deconstruction of anarchy which none of us wanted to spend 10,-€ on.

Feeling a bit demoralized, we went to see The Italian Job (which, being about revenge methodically planned and executed in an utterly realistic fashion, makes a nice counterpart to Kill Bill). This cheered us back up again, so we ventured out — not to the Requiem, but to the Berliner Philharmoniker, playing a retrospective of the work of Max Bru[c]h on the occasion of his 165th birthday. The setting and the musicians were fabulous; the compositions were good, albeit not up to the standard of a Brahms or a Beethoven — but then, that's why Bruh is an obscure 19th century composer and they are famous. I have never before seen a piece performed which requires two pianos as well as a full orchestra; that one was, in my opinion, the best.

After the concert, we went to Alex(?)'s Diner (a decent German imitation of a good American 1950s-style diner) for dinner, and observed France beat Germany at soccer, 3-0.