Eine kleine Berlinermusik

★★★★/★★★★

Berlin has a musical thumbprint unmatched by any metropolis except, perhaps, Paris. Where Paris calls to mind a wheezing accordion and Edith Piaf, Berlin is defined by the Weill-Brecht sound and all the songs that flourished around them. What gives Anne Sofie von Otter’s Berlin album an engrossing fascination is its traversal of themes before, during and after the Nazi era.

This is mentally and emotionally confusing. The music doesn’t change much, whatever the circumstances. Nor do some of the composers. Much is going on between the bars. A 1935 farewell song, “Vorbei”, accompanied on a musical saw, might lament the end of freedom in Berlin and the draining of its talent. That song is followed by Hanns Eisler’s “On suicide”, written in Hollywood exile. A 1939 Nazi movie “Lied der Wüste” has a typical Jewish wedding song worked into its score, complete with klezmer violin.

Von Otter, 71, absorbed much of this culture from her father, a Swedish diplomat in Hitler’s Berlin. Her delivery is more Marlene Dietrich than Ute Lemper but there is so much revelation in these 19 tracks that stylistic considerations are immaterial. Almost every track is a mind-opener.

By way of counterpoint, I turned to a current Berlin jazz pianist and singer, Clara Haberkamp. I am struck by an artist whose first touch is in the Martha Argerich class for arresting attention. She betrays classical training and resists it.

I know nothing of Clara Haberkamp except that her Love Maps album conveys a kind of late-night Berlin atmosphere that was changed neither by terror nor by a wall. Don’t miss her three-minute variations on Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata. This is a short-measure recital, barely half an hour, and it left me wanting a lot more. Her boutique label, TXYart, eclectic to a fault, is well worth exploring. Berlin, as they say, bleibt Berlin.