Rufus Beck: Shakespeares Sommernachtstraum - eine musikalische Stand-up-Comedy
“Midsummer Night's Dream” is a musical-literary evening of Shakespeare's play, featuring texts by Schlegel-Tieck, Michael Köhlmeier, and Rufus Beck. Rufus Beck performs and narrates in the style of a stand-up comedian his ironic and modern version of the Midsummer Night's Dream.
William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is a love confusion game and one of his most performed plays. At its core are the intertwined love inclinations of its protagonists. Hermia and Lysander, sure of their mutual devotion, flee Athens towards the enchanted forest, where they meet the Fairy King Oberon and his wife Titania, who are in dispute. When the spurned fiancé Demetrius and the unhappily in love Helena also arrive, and Puck, Oberon's servant, administers a love potion to the four lovers from Athens, love confusions begin, turning everything upside down.
The siblings Anna and Ines Walachowski play the homonymous play music by Mendelssohn-Bartholdy on the piano, four-handed. Mendelssohn completed it in 1843 on behalf of the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. Thanks to the famous "Wedding March" and those four magical chords of the overture, which enchantingly open the door to King Oberon's moonlit fairy realm at the beginning of the work, it is one of the composer's most popular pieces.
Rufus Beck has transformed William Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream" into a stand-up comedy. In doing so, he embodies the various fantastic characters of Shakespeare and portrays "Bottom," "Oberon," "Titania," the loving "Hermia," "Helena," "Lysander," "Demetrius," among others.
Rufus Beck
Rufus Beck is a true multi-talent or, as he describes himself, "a decathlete of the performing arts." This becomes evident when one considers his numerous activities as a TV, film, and theater actor, audiobook and voice-over artist, author, musician, presenter, producer, and director. Beck stumbled into acting during his studies as a side job. Since 1979, Rufus Beck has been on the "boards that mean the world." He made his debut in Munich in 1989 and was honored as the Emerging Actor of the Year by the theater magazine "Theater Heute" for his role as Franz Moor in Schiller's "The Robbers." Beck has never attended drama school. He attributes his success to his talent, luck, and vision: he has always wanted to stand on the big stages as a storyteller, and he has achieved that: Berliner Ensemble, Bavarian State Theater, Kammerspiele Munich, Schauspiel Köln, Hamburger Schauspielhaus, among others. The list goes on. Beck has also had success in film and television. From the 1990s, he appeared in over 60 television and 12 film productions. This includes roles in Sönke Wortmann's films "Kleine Haie," 1991, and as "Waltraud" in "Der bewegte Mann," 1994. Beck was nominated for the Golden Film Award in 1999 for his role as a bumbling kidnapper in "Jimmy the Kid." Younger audiences know him as "Coach Willy" from "Die Wilden Fußball Kerle" and as "The Robber Hotzenplotz."
Musically, Beck stood out through his collaboration with Peter Maffay on the rock 'n' roll fantasy musicals about the dragon "Tabaluga", which around 1.5 million viewers saw live. He produces and narrates audiobooks - over 150 productions in the last 20 years. The Harry Potter fans alone know and love him on 124 CDs (!) as Harry, Ron, Hermione, Dumbledore, Snape, Voldemort, Dobby, etc., sparking a true audiobook boom. Beck is also an author. He wrote several theater adaptations, released the anthology "Geschichten für uns Kinder" in 2006, and published the non-fiction book "Kinder lieben Märchen und entdecken Werte" in March 2007. In recent years, Rufus Beck has refocused on theater, most recently in "Zorn" at the Hamburger Kammerspiele.
Another pillar of his career is his own one-person plays, shows, multimedia readings, and performances with orchestras and bands that he frequently tours with.
Piano Duo Walachowski
Anna and Ines Walachowski
"The two pianists lack nothing, neither in temperament, incisive rhythmic interpretation, nor in warmth or tonal sensitivity." (Klassik Heute)
Anna and Ines Walachowski have long been among the leading piano duos of today. For almost two decades, the two sisters have thrilled their audiences on international concert stages.
They have been invited to numerous prestigious festivals such as the Rheingau Musik Festival, Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival, the Dresden Music Festival, the MDR Musiksommer, the Lower Saxony Music Days, the Moselfestwochen, the Ludwigsburg Castle Festival, as well as the Harbin Music Festival (China) and the Bangkok Music Festival (Thailand). Born in Poland, they began piano lessons at the ages of four and six. In 1983, the family relocated to Germany. Anna and Ines studied at the Hanover University of Music and the Mozarteum in Salzburg. They received significant musical impulses from Professor Karl Heinz Kämmerling and Professor Alfons Kontarsky, who described the sisters as "strong personalities with assertiveness and willpower." Yet, these strong personalities by no means impede each other; on the contrary - thanks to their shared teachers and exceptional harmony, they form a unified physical and artistic entity from which they benefit as a duo. "They play as if made from one piece" (Pizzicato). Indeed, the piano duo's discography is versatile and extensive, featuring works ranging from Mozart, Chopin, Brahms, and Tchaikovsky to the double concertos by Mendelssohn and Poulenc, all the way to Rachmaninov, Ravel, and Gershwin. Anna and Ines made their duo debut in 1996. Since then, they have regularly performed in renowned music halls such as the Berlin Philharmonie, the Gewandhaus Leipzig, the Liederhalle Stuttgart, the Prinzregententheater Munich, the Stadtcasino Basel, the KKL Lucerne, or the Philharmonies of Wroclaw, Lodz, and Olsztyn. Successful collaborations with Juliane Köhler, Norbert Blüm, Friedrich von Thun, and Roger Willemsen have expanded the artistic spectrum of the versatile piano duo. Currently, the sisters perform with the actor Rufus Beck and the children's book author Stefan Gemmel.
Doors open at 6:30 PM.