Czech music
Floods this space.
The Aussie Berlin Boys
Brett Dean and his Viola
Summon the dead:
The roll call of Terezin
Parades its non-survivors.
Not a dance of death
But holding on to life
And its wild energy
Scraping out a tattered dream
Where the children triumph
Where the animals
In Mahlerian time
Save the world
From apocalyptic disorders.
The hieroglyphics
Chalk their way
Across the decades
Like scratch marks
On a prison wall
Dark witness
To a century's pall.
So, that in this new century
In this new world
With is shiny harbour
The Boys from Berlin
Tell the story
Of this bohemian vainglory
When Goethe’s tribe
Bathed in the blood of Jewish pride
Sinned for all mankind.
Slowly the viola winds its way
Towards a conclusion.
The Aussie Ausländer
The global musician
Walks backward across Valhalla’s rainbow bridge
Playing his strings
Shadowed by the ferries that glide across the waters.
In this frisson
The post modern chime
Evokes an instinctive hybridity
As vigil and ferocious attack
Awaken remembrance:
Die Zeit, die is ein sonderbar Ding.
The bizarre embedded in their bones
The Boys from Berlin chant their song
As Traurigkeit softly elides both space and time.
Gar Jones: July 2015
Australian World Orchestra Berlin Trio: Brett Dean; Stanley Dodds; Matthew McDonald.