Published Friday 3rd October 2025 10月3日金曜日

One of the strange things about being self-employed is that you don’t have to feel guilty putting your feet up on a public holiday. Like today, which is “Day of German Unity” Tag der Deutschen Einheit 🍺. Unfortunately though, if you look at voting patterns across the whole country it is quite clear that West-East division is still there – mentally at least.

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⇒ I’ve just sung my first concert with the Frankfurt Figuralchor, in a concert venue I didn’t know existed, and a list of works which I had never sung in my life before. Starting in full German romantic (Sehnsucht /Franz Schubert) sung from the balcony with 2 tenor lines and 3 bass lines! “Those who know what yearning is will know how much I suffer” – oh how narcissistic can you get…..😅

And if that wasn’t enough we then launched into Wolf-Ferrari’s Rispetto for double choir and soprano solo. The concert was simply called “Süden” (South) and was meant to conjure up the warmth of Italy and Spain as we head into Autumn. Conductor Paul Schäffer had even asked Spanish composer Sonja Magias for a piece. A mystical, atmospheric piece of Mayan poetry Alzo aqui. Wonderful stuff.

Our accompanist James Guey gave us a wonderfully forceful performance of Bach’s Italian Concerto BWV 971 to divide the evening into two halves 🎹 Just as well, for after performing Carlo Gesualdo’s * strange Dolcissima mia vita (My Sweetest Life”) we were going for a real romp with Rossini and his I Gondolieri….

Venue? The Haus der Chöre (House of Choirs) in North Frankfurt. Sold out.

* Carlo Gesualdo da Venosa 1566-1613. An Italian nobleman famous not only for his unusual madrigals, but for killing his first wife and her lover upon finding them in flagrante delicto . Hmm.

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⇒ Yes, talking about Sehnsucht we’ve now entered that season of Autumn, with that faint sense of yearning for the past summer warmth, but a shift to new colours and energy…..

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In Japan it’s still T-shirts et al, though the bold red of the Higanbana Red tiger Lily (ひがんばな) marks the new season….

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⇒ This is all in stark contrast to being in West Sussex just over 3 weeks ago……..

Our last stop had been to visit family in Chichester. On the face of it a quintessential English cathedral town. The natural harbour nearby was used by the Romans, who also laid out the grid pattern of the main streets. The medieval marketplace is the sign of a prosperous past, and the ancient cathedral has an unexpected link with Germany.

⇒ In the 1930s, the Bishop of this cathedral was a man named George Bell. He stands out as somebody who repeatedly warned the British government about what was really going on in Germany at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bell_(bishop)

⇒ Without the benefit of the social media of today, he wrote strong letters to The Times, denouncing the German Protestant Church (D.E.K.) for accepting the “Aryan Paragraph” under the Nazis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryan_paragraph.

⇒ During the war he became the international voice for the “Confessing” church in Germany…..https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessing_Church

⇒ Through his close friendship with Dietrich Bonnhoefer, he was fully informed about the details of the first plot to assassinate Hitler, and asked in vain for support for those involved.

⇒ He argued in the House of Lords against “area bombing” (sometimes known as carpet bombing) of German cities….In 1941 in a letter to The Times, he called the bombing of unarmed women and children “barbarian” which would destroy the just cause for the war, thus openly criticising the prime ministers advocacy of such a bombing strategy (It’s difficult not to think of Gaza today in this context)

⇒ His public intervention helped save Pastor Martin Niemöller from execution in Dachau in 1938.

An exeptional man. A pacifist. Knocking his head against a wall of indifference in British Politics.

In the Bishop`s Garden….

Goodbye to lovely Chichester harbour….

Thank you to Bruce and Vivien for looking after Tomoko and myself!

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⇒ When it was time to return to Germany I chose the Dover – Dunkirk ferry crossing. The white cliffs slowly receded behind me…..

I looked for art where where none was intended…………

What do they need Carbon Dioxide for? I thought there was enough on the planet already. And what’s this… some sort of shrine to the sea spirits?

Unlike most galleries, you can walk over the art here…

That is, if you have managed to open this door to get out on deck…..

And somewhere high above an Air India flight is heading for Haneda airport in Tokyo ⛩️ (it got there, but without any in-flight entertainment functioning) ✈️

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CONCERT

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“…Freude, Freude, schöner Götterfunken……”

Am singing in Beethoven’s Ninth in the Staatstheater Darmstadt on Sunday Oct. 12th (18:00 Grosses Haus) as part of the Deutsche Philharmonie Merck’s Concert Programme …

It would be fun to see you there…..Theodore Browne is singing the tenor solo and Liudmila Firagina is leading the `Cellos…….

Here’s a link for tickets…..https://www.staatstheater-darmstadt.de/spielplan/

As always thank you for reading, and I hope you find it interesting. Comments welcome below. Feel free to forward on to anyone who might be interested.

章の終わり。 読んでくれてありがとう！。ご興味がある方にはお気軽に転送してください。

See you またね 🚢

nigelwruddock@gmail.com

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