Christopher Fox:
Widerstehen's songs of resistance Interview : Abi Bliss
The composer tells hcmf// how his aunt's quiet dignity before the Nazis inspired Widerstehen In the face of the unimaginable scale of horrors committed by the Nazis before and during the Second World War, each individual story has its own tragic darkness, and sometimes also a small amount of light. Performed by ensemble recherche and receiving its UK premiere at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival on Tuesday 25 November, Christopher Fox's Widerstehen reimagines one such fate: that of his aunt, Elisabeth von Thadden, who was executed in Berlin in 1944.
I wanted somehow to give a sense of what she was like, of her beliefs, perhaps a sense of the times in which she lived, but above all a sense of her extraordinary resolution in the face of oppression The idea for Widerstehen, whose German title translates as 'Resistance', was planted when, on a visit to the city in 2009, Fox found himself confronted by a photograph of von Thadden in the German Resistance Museum. Previously, he had heard 'surprisingly little' about his mother's elder half-sister, who was born in 1890, from his own family. 'I knew she had founded a school and had died in prison but I don't think I knew the details of her 'crime' or of how she was betrayed,' he recalls. 'Quite why I didn't know more I'm not sure, although I think the events of the 1944-46 period were so traumatic for my mother's family - the family was scattered across Europe, my uncle Gerhard was also killed, and their home was lost when the post-war borders were established that it was not a subject of conversation for most of my life.' A teacher, Elisabeth von Thadden had established a school in Heidelberg, which was later closed down by the Nazis in 1941 for insufficiently promoting their ideals. She then became a member of Solf-Kreis, a group of intellectuals who would meet to discuss aiding enemies of the Third Reich and imagine how German society might rebuild itself after its eventual defeat. The group was infiltrated by a Gestapo agent who laid a trap,
with the result that its members were arrested in January 1944, with von Thadden convicted of treason and of undermining the war effort. Fox started to research von Thadden's story in depth, reconstructing events from official documents, letters and family memories, and in the process discovering that she had lived just off Savignyplatz in west Berlin, a favourite part of the city for him and about five minutes' walk from where he had stayed whilst resident there on a Berlin Artists' grant in 1987. Conceived by Fox not so much as a chamber opera as a 'documentary in eight scenes', Widerstehen imagines von Thadden awaiting execution in her cell in Berlin's Plรถtzensee Prison. Her courage and calm demeanour in those final hours were witnessed by a temporary companion. 'On Elisabeth's last day she was accompanied by a prison official who stayed with her until the end,' Fox explains. 'They talked together and sang hymns and that's what made me think that this was a story that could be told in music.' Mezzo-soprano Truike van der Poel plays von Thadden, whilst the other woman is represented by Daniela Mohr in a speaking part, and one section is a vocal collage using the real-life words of Roland Freisler, the trial judge.
Christopher Fox: Widerstehen's songs of resistance
According to her companion, von Thadden went to the guillotine singing a chorale. 'It was important to me that, were Elisabeth somehow to be able to hear the music, she would understand it and understand why and how it represents her. So a lot of the music is based on music she would have known, especially Bach and Schumann,' says Fox, who is full of praise for ensemble recherche's sensitive realisation of his work: 'They are perfect - they play, sing and speak with extraordinary concentration, understanding and warmth. They were also wonderful supporters of the project from the very beginning when I first suggested it to them.' Widerstehen premiered in Freiberg in 2012; for this first British performance at hcmf//, Fox has expanded it with a film and narrated introduction. 'Because this is such a German subject, I thought it should remain in German, but of course I also want non-German speakers to understand what it's about,' he explains. 'So I've added an introduction which is narrated by me in English and which mirrors the structure - but in a much
www.hcmf.co.uk
hcm f
shorter form - of the original work. The 'film' is a mixture of images and text, all of it found material, which illustrate and counterpoint the spoken narration, and the ensemble play too, another layer of counterpoint.' Overall, however, Widerstehen is not so much a sequential drama as a tribute to von Thadden's own quietly expressed inner strength. 'I wanted somehow to give a sense of what she was like, of her beliefs, perhaps a sense of the times in which she lived, but above all a sense of her extraordinary resolution in the face of oppression.'
Christopher Fox @ Tuesday 25 November |
@hcm fuk
2014 Widerstehen
Fri 21 - Sun 30 November 2014