BY MYLES OAKEY, EUROPE CORRESPONDENT
On Wednesday nights at Bar Zum Schmutzigen Hobby, Miss Judy Ladivina, draped in glitter and windblown by the glamour of a stage fan, hosts a night of Drag and Drinks as she lip syncs international pop hits.
For classical guitarists and Open Strings Berlin founders Nicolas Haumann and Hendrik Schacht, it’s a weekly event. I had just landed in Berlin when Nicolas and Hendrik sent me an invite. The two couldn’t be more pleased with the context of our first introduction.
“I thought, if you’re going to write an interview with us, you may as well get the real picture,” Nicolas says.
For Nicolas and Hendrik, the real picture is exactly that: openly sharing an honest and uncurated self and musical life; one where Gaga overlaps with Regondi. Open Strings Berlin embodies this philosophy as a community of meaningful relationships, honesty, and emotional and artistic authenticity.
During the past two years, Nicolas and Hendrik have built Open Strings Berlin to produce and publish intimate performance and interview films profiling the diverse, messy, and ordinary musical lives of contemporary classical musicians.
“We ask people to be honest with themselves, if they can deliver what comes with being a part of Open Strings,” Nicolas says.
“Because it really is like a family.”
The invitation to join Open Strings is a genuine offer that’s extended to performers who wish to record a piece of music and a real conversation, entwined with the shape of their artistic and personal history. Watching an Open Strings interview, I feel as if I’ve just walked in on a conversation that’s been brewing for a few hours: it’s at that point, maybe a drink or two in, where inhibitions subside and honesty flows.
For Nicolas and Hendrik, it’s about getting to know the artists as people, and forming a genuine friendship so artists are comfortable behind and in front of the camera.
“Sometimes it just takes spending a weekend with us. It’s not as if the artist takes on a new attitude. It was always in them,” Nicolas says.
If a tendency exists to act or present yourself in a curated manner – a manner you may feel is more accepted by the professional classical music community – Nicolas and Hendrik will break you. Truth will burst through the cracks in your façade. Insecurity, humility, passion, and humour will eventually stand in its place. No artist is ever asked to present in a certain way. In fact, every production detail regarding repertoire, dress, and location is workshopped with the artist themselves towards their own artistic vision. All Nicolas and Hendrik do is create the conditions for their artist’s best self to be put forward.
“[The artist will] often play the role they feel like they are supposed to play. It’s just a matter how you feel about yourself,” Nicolas says.
“If you have people around you, who tell you that what you do is good, and good enough, and you are good enough of a person, it can immediately lead to people opening up and being more authentic.”
Having shared a taxi home from Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg in the early hours of the morning, the usual formalities were well out of the way. Like the artists they profile, Nicolas and Hendrik’s hospitality and loveable energy became my proper introduction to Berlin.
When we sat down for coffee later that day, the two were surprised and somewhat thrown by my pre-written questions: “We don’t prepare for the interviews,” Nicolas says.
Hendrik pauses: “Sometimes we haven’t slept…”
Each Open Strings film project includes two distinct releases: one performance and one interview. Aesthetically pleasing – as well as a realistic portrayal of where artists spend their time – all films are shot in the cafés, bars, record stores, theatres, parks, and abandoned spaces of Berlin.
“Presenting artists this way makes the classical guitar more contemporary. It’s within the Zeitgeist. It makes it more accessible to a new audience that doesn’t have a connection to the classical repertoire,” Nicolas says.
“When I’m engaged in a project, I like to feel that I am experiencing something happening right now. Not just a copy of something else.”
Hendrik says that what Open Strings promotes is “not necessarily classical guitar repertoire, but new classical guitar-music”.
In recent projects, audiences hear from German Judith Bunk, performing Forlorn Hope Fantasy by John Dowland, who tells the story of when competition judge approached her to say she had “the worst Bach interpretation”; and how her musical journey has included the challenge of developing the desired sound and technique for lute as well as guitar.
Rosie Bennet, performing the Prelude, Fugue, Allegro of BWV 998 by J.S. Bach’, addresses gender inequality in expectations of artistic expression and persona, and calls for listening that, as Rosie recounts, “busts your life apart”.
Australian guitarist Andrew Blanch performs the Alirio Diaz transcription of Los Caujaritos by Ignacio ‘Indio’ Figueredo, and shares the process and benefits of transcription, and how past negative effects of practice guilt and obsessive pre-concert rituals have led to a healthier “self-sabotage” philosophy.
And Scottish guitarist Kevin Cahill performs Equinox by Toru Takemitsu, and talks openly about his love for the blues, developing an individual voice amongst the competitive “cowboy” nature of guitar, and ‘90s video console fighter games.
The most direct and dangerous discussion comes from a three-part interview with Matthew McAllister, who cuts through the politics of classical music towards real-world individual artistry. In partnership with Open Strings, Matthew also premieres a newly commissioned piece, Bagatelle No. 1 by Irish composer Greg Caffrey.
Speaking to the concept of Open Strings, Nicolas says: “The interview shouldn’t be a commercial for your artist persona.”
“Maybe we got the definition of ‘interview’ wrong,” he continues in jest. “The channel should be a safe place for everyone to talk about what is also not going well for them.
“Why should someone need to say, ‘I don’t have any problems with this piece’? You should be able to say, ‘I struggled for years and I was never able to play it, and now, I think I finally can – kind of’. That’s beautiful.
“We’re doing this because it makes the artist more authentic and human, which is not something that is common in the classical world. It means not trying to polish everything; to be honest with your flaws. This is basically what we’re trying to be about. And it gives other artists hope.”
The feel of each project is intimate, insightful, and stimulating. The cinematography captures the intensity of a performer’s commitment, or their state of immersive transcendence. Multiple camera angles draw the viewers’ attention to the details of right hand articulation, and the excitement of difficult left hand stretches or fast passages, adding interest beyond the sound itself.
There’s complete transparency too when it comes to the production process. All audio is studio recorded for the highest quality, and allows for multiple takes to present the artist’s best performance. On a separate day, the location performance shoots require syncing the visual performance to the pre-recorded audio.
The artistic vision, through direction of physical location and cinematography, avoids the risk of being kitsch: the existence of production process doesn’t even come to mind. “The main difference with Opens Strings production is that, as professional classical guitarists ourselves, we pick up on everything.”
In some wonderfully intimate films, Portuguese guitarist Rebeca Oliveira performs her own transcription of Sonata No. 23 by Portuguese composer Carlos Seixas, originally written for harpsichord. And, sitting at a kitchen table, Australian-German guitarist Jesse Flowers and vocalist Julia Spies perform an arrangement of Melodies de Verlaine by Claude Debussy.
In a city where, Nicolas and Hendrik frankly state, “there is no guitar scene to speak of”, the two guitarists are building a local and global community.
“I don’t think it’s a bad thing that there’s a lack of community going on here in Berlin. It also means that there’s a lack of guitar mafia,” Nicolas says.
“If you’ve been to a festival, or followed the scene, that is something you’ll be familiar with: same people, winning the same competitions, teaching at the same festivals. There’s so much going on here in Berlin that the ‘single project’, ‘the single scene’, loses a bit of tension.”
“A conventional guitar festival would not be enough to show what possibilities you have here as an artist,” Hendrik says.
Hendrik and Nicolas recognised the need for a platform that would embrace and support artists who carve out a space of their own between solidified genres and traditions. Before Open Strings, Nicolas and Hendrik started out by shooting performance videos for themselves only to see a moment in the light before disappearing into the dark ether of the internet.
“The idea with Open Strings was that through a single channel, one community, we could create quality content and help one another with the support and promotion of our work,” Hendrik says.
“Artists like those featured on Open Strings need a platform. Because there is none,” Nicolas says.
“You can try self-promotion. For those people who are engaged with social media, it might work, but a lot of artists don’t have the sensibility and time for it. We certainly know it’s a vault once you open it.”
In the current environment of classical music, artists are pulled by the tide of expectation. There is a struggle between artistic authenticity and the temptation to reconcile with external models of success. Lost in the social and cultural currency of image and persona in the digital world, it can be easy to forget the stories of real people living real musical lives. Real people have challenges and doubts; they take risks and find fulfilment in unforeseen paths and creative opportunities. Open Strings Berlin amplifies these voices to us in sound and image, bringing classical musicians hope and inspiration.
For those lucky enough work with Nicolas and Hendrik, be warned, they will break you. And you’ll also get to know two of the best hearts in classical music.
Follow Nicolas and Hendrik’s Open Strings Berlin project on the website.
Images supplied.
