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Piece of Berlin Wall Given a Home in Battery Park By PAUL KWAK
Where politics and government create barriers and erect walls, music and art transcend geography and provinciality, a potency to which a special concert on November 14 attested vividly. The Concert of Friendship, at the World Financial Center's Winter Garden, celebrated a recent gift to New York from the city of Berlin, namely a monumental segment of the Berlin Wall to be displayed permanently in Battery Park, not far from the Statue of Liberty. This historic piece of concrete was given to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, at 12:57 p.m. E.S.T. (Pieces of the Berlin Wall are also displayed at various locations in the city, including a plaza at Madison Avenue and 53rd Street, the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum, and the U.N.)
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| A mounted policeman stops to read a plaque describing the piece of the Berlin Wall that is on permanent display in Battery Park. Fragments of the wall were a gift from the city of Berlin to New York. (Photo by Reka Reisinger) |
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The concert featured Juilliard students in collaboration with students from the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music of Berlin. Though initial conversations between representatives of the cities of New York and Berlin had suggested concerts featuring the New York and Berlin Philharmonic orchestras, concert organizers opted instead for a concert exclusively featuring students, according to Tanja Dorn, one of the event's principal organizers. Currently the artistic director of Klavierhaus in New York, Dorn emphasized the organizers' vested interest in showcasing the youth of both cities, to demonstrate their belief that "our future is in the hands of these musicians and their energy. It is up to them to do something for the future of our world." In this way, pointed out Dorn, having Juilliard and Eisler Academy students became even more meaningful than other plans might have been.Dorn, who herself is a musician trained in chamber music and piano at the academy, has busied herself in New York "serving the humanitarian impulses of the city through music." She detailed the complex diplomatic processes involved in bringing the segment of the wall from Berlin to New York, as well as the enormous logistical challenges inherent to such a symbolically laden process. "Berlin was happy to approve the gift," Dorn notes enthusiastically, adding that the 2.78-ton piece of concrete was due to arrive in time to celebrate the precise anniversary of the wall's collapse on November 9. While bureaucratic hurdles ultimately prevented such timing, Dorn said she was pleased with the way that the concert and commemoration took shape, and for the opportunity for collaboration between students at both schools.Indeed, the concert featured substantial works by the favorite composers of the chamber literature, including the Piano Quintet, Op. 57, of Shostakovich, performed by members of the Hanns Eisler Academy, and the D-Minor Piano Trio of Mendelssohn, performed by Trio Sans Paroles, composed of three Juilliard students: violinist Annedore Oberborbeck, cellist Karen Ouzounian, and pianist Weiyin Chen. In addition, eight Juilliard brass students—trumpeters Jared Bushee, Gareth Flowers, Jeffrey Holbrook, and Brandon Ridenour; trombonists Kirk Ferguson and Christopher Reaves; and bass trombonists Alan Carr and Ben Green—performed the Venetian Canzoni by Renaissance composer Giovanni Gabrieli, and Juilliard violinist Jing Wang and cellist Andrew Yee joined three students from the academy to play the first movement of Schumann's Piano Quintet, Op. 47.The concert was thus conceived to feature a small sampling of the works of some of Germany's greatest composers, and in including the Shostakovich quintet, the organizers invoked the East-West divide that the Berlin Wall came to symbolize, among other things. The Gabrieli work, furthermore, helped illustrate the Western tradition of music and its role in shaping the culture, values, and identity of societies from the Middle Ages to the present.
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| The Trio Sans Paroles from Juilliard (pianist Weiyin Chen, violinist Annedore Oberborbeck, and cellist Karen Ouzounian) perform at the Concert of Friendship at the Winter Garden. (Photo by Reka Reisinger) |
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In addition to the symbolic organization of its repertoire, the Concert of Friendship resonated with poignant symbolism that elegantly illustrated the important intersection of music, politics, and culture. In the wake of a highly contentious presidential election that revealed a country bitterly divided along fault lines of "moral values," this concert in what might be considered America's cultural mecca, New York City, became a plain reminder of the dangers of erecting walls along ideological lines that obscure the humanity of a people. The segment of the wall, a gift from the city of Berlin, will stand in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, a gift to America from France, and close to the heart of Ground Zero; this confluence of totemic monuments serves as an important reminder of the urgency of international cooperation amid global threats of terrorism, war, and genocide.Daniel Barenboim, honorary president of the academy, wrote in a statement read at the concert: "In a world increasingly torn by modern politics and ancient hatreds, musicians are fortunate to share a wonderful gift. Music is truly the universal language—able to transcend the boundaries and roadblocks thrown up by human frailties." He continued, noting the centrality of music and art to the cause of unity amid political division, "History is laden with examples of regimes which, for whatever reason—political or economic gain, the desire for domination, madness—have sought to divide humanity. We are confronted daily with the consequences of their actions, but it is well to remind ourselves that there have also been some important successes in uniting the peoples of the world."This is a lesson that dwells actively in the consciousness of one of the concert's performers, pianist Weiyin Chen, who was naturalized as an American citizen in November 2003. The founding pianist of the Trio Sans Paroles, she traveled to Berlin with the trio in the summer of 2004 and recalls the "powerful experience" she had upon seeing the wall. For Chen, the encounter with the Berlin Wall resonated with her experiences as a Taiwanese-American and the ethos of her trio, for whom "combining cultures is a big thing," she explained (referring to the immigrant heritage of Ouzounian and Oberborbeck). The trio was formed for ChamberFest 2003, during which they performed the Mendelssohn trio—the same one they performed at the Concert of Friendship—and gave what was for them a transformative performance of the second movement, often likened to one of Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words, or Chants Sans Paroles (in the German, Lieder Ohne Worte). The second movement prompted them to call themselves the Trio Sans Paroles, expressing the sentiment that their group dynamic needed no words, only music.The Concert of Friendship exhibited, on a larger scale and in a succinct and beautiful way, this communicative and barrier-breaching power of music. Dorn, who hopes that this will be the first event in a continuing series of collaborations between New York and Berlin, between Juilliard and the Eisler Academy, said that, for her, the wall's new home in Battery Park evokes in one singular monument the vast array of geopolitical and historical forces that press most urgently on society today. "It is a symbol of freedom," Dorn said. "It speaks for itself."Paul Kwak is a master's student in collaborative piano.
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