Berliner Momente for orchestra

• Date: 1988
• Composer: Walter Boudreau
• Period: Modern (1910-1949)

Review

Walter Boudreau's Berliner Momente for orchestra is one that loves and laments the aesthetically rich and tragic nature of German history. One key to the score is in the interaction of two themes, the German national anthem (the imperial hymn that Haydn composed) and the theme of Siegfried's death from Richard Wagner's Twilight of the Idols. These works wind around one another, each theme becoming thoroughly transformed by the presence of the other. As well, the music is also reacting to a musical history of Berlin -- in 16 minutes! It was written to commemorate Berlin's 750th birthday in 1988. These events are naturally too many to mention, but they do in generally build toward the beginnings of World War I, then World War II. To symbolize the cold war that followed, Boudreau ends the work with an unresolved chord, just as the Berlin Wall stood, with no one knowing that the wall would come down in the following year. How the events are specifically played out (the Franco-Prussian Wars, Nazism, etc.) is not something that most listeners will not easily pick up on; it is in a language mostly particular to the composer alone. One can guess that, for example, that the chaotic, smashing chords and percussion near the end are indicative of the hyper-destructive Third Reich. Such literalism is not as important as the emotions of this diverse, and eventful score. Astute listeners may suspect a connection between Boudreau's aesthetic and that of the German painter, Anselm Kiefer. Kiefer looks back at the twentieth century and attempts to carry German art through its point of obliteration, where the Nazis effectively crushed it among other things. Boudreau seems to have the same interest: to demonstrate aesthetic continuum between the Berliner atmosphere of World War I and that of the Wall that divided that city. Berliner Momente is an act against the devastation of cultural fragmentation. ~ John Keillor, Rovi

Albums with Complete Performances of the Work

Title	Date
L'Orchestre Métropolitain sous la Direction de Walter Boudreau	1991

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