How the project came about

Some projects have to mature slowly until they have found their final format - like the Klári project. In an interview, Sarah van der Kemp explains how the lockdown helped her to develop her new music format.

Ms. van der Kemp, how did you get involved in the Klári project?

Two things came together. Firstly, the first pandemic lockdown had just started and the concerts were all canceled. I was looking for a different performance format so that I could still perform. And secondly, I wanted to perform Bartók's song cycle op. 15 - the Klári songs. I heard the songs for the first time a few years ago and they have stayed with me ever since. I was thrilled by the music and wondered why they are so rarely performed. I suppose it was because of the lyrics, which the critics thought were "bad". However, I didn't think that was the case at all and wanted to set a different tone with a new interpretation. This gave rise to the idea of making Bartók's songs the focus of a concert program and literally putting them in a different light. And because we were still in a pandemic, I also decided on a video format.

How did you find your colleague Robert Pflanz?

I knew Robert from an opera production in Schwerin. He did the stage design there and I sang. I was thrilled by his stage design and his video installations. It was used so sensitively and tastefully that I thought: either I do this with Robert or not at all. Of course, I didn't tell him that at the beginning!

What does the name "Klári project" stand for?

The name stands for the concert format, i.e. chamber music with video art, as well as for the ensemble. It recalls the origin of the project idea and the first program, the Klári-Suite. The namesake is Klára Gombossy, the very young poetess of the Bartók songs that started it all. The two met on one of Bartók's study trips, where Klára, the 14-year-old daughter of a forester, translated Slovakian folk songs for him. Bartók collected and archived these songs. Later, she also showed him her own texts. Bartók recognized Klára's talent and encouraged her education. We know that Béla Bartók fell in love with Klára Gombossy, but that she did not return his feelings. However, after a long creative crisis after the First World War, she seems to have encouraged him to compose again. What remains for us are the four settings of her poems in his cycle op. 15.

Why were you so interested in - and touched by - this little-known song cycle?

For me, these songs have a very unique and unusual quality. Bartók is known for collecting and writing down folk songs from a wide range of ethnic groups. Folk songs have the same melody and accompaniment in every verse. In Bartók's oeuvre there are only 10 so-called art songs, those in op. 15 and 16, which are characterized by the fact that they are through-composed, i.e. each verse has a different melody and also a different accompaniment in the piano. The music develops along the text as the song progresses. Bartók did not invent this principle, but it is an exception in his own oeuvre. In contrast to the folk songs he collected, they are musically and thematically very reminiscent of his opera "Bluebeard's Castle" - they are like a concert version in miniature!

What particularly touches me about the Klári songs is Bartók's treatment of the texts. They reflect the whole range of a young woman's longings - from erotic fantasies to the longed-for spiritual union of two souls, the formulation of which was certainly not common at the time. Bartók gives space to these passionate feelings, allows them to explode, and at the same time he restrains them through his musical form and sound world. I think he recognized these unreflected, free outbursts of emotion as a quality of particularly strong, passionate expression, and generously ignored the sometimes somewhat awkward poetry. This word-sound relationship is very appealing in interpretative work!

Do you need to know about this background to properly understand the songs and their realization?

No. The songs stand on their own. In this case, background knowledge is perhaps more of a hindrance when listening, because it quickly leads to speculation about the relationship between Klára and Bartók. The fact that she was only 14 years old, while Bartók was already in his late thirties and also married, apparently gives rise to many speculations, in which I do not wish to participate.

These plays are still rarely performed today - so are you breaking a taboo in your performances?

No. In the history of their reception, the lyrics of the songs are almost uniformly scathingly judged. They are dismissed as pubertal eroticism, embarrassing, amateurish and naive. For me, these assessments reveal more about the authors' relationship to erotic themes than about the quality of the poems. Longings for love are no longer taboo today!

Ms. van der Kemp - why does your music actually need video art as a backdrop?

I'm glad you asked! There is a danger of confusion when combining music and video, which I want to avoid at all costs. After all, this also concerns the question of artistic added value.

Videos in connection with classical music are nothing new, and are very fashionable at the moment. In chamber music, my singer's heart is actually completely against it. After all, songs and chamber music are all about depicting space and colors in sound. The images should arise spontaneously in the listener's mind - before their inner eye, completely individually. For me, that is art and its magic.

However, if you provide the images, such as in a video, the video can quickly become a substitute or even a duplication of the interpretative task. But that is not what we intend to do in our concert programs! The video should neither duplicate the music nor explain the words, and certainly not depict a scene like in an opera. The video art is used by us "purely compositionally". Quasi as our own musical voice that you can "hear".

The important, and perhaps also the unique thing about the KLÁRI idea is not that the video appears as a new instrument, i.e. as a new chamber music instrumentation, but that a musical-aesthetic standpoint is created. Form and content should correspond. And we extend this to the entire concert evening. The development of video art throughout the evening spans a wide artistic arc.

What is your artistic aim?

The process! The project is an experiment.

What was the biggest challenge in this unprecedented project?

The most difficult thing was to find a balance between image and music. Bartók's music, his songs, don't really need images, because they emerge by themselves when you listen to them. And from the perspective of a singer, I use video art to create a companion who is always faster than me.

For each song, we asked ourselves in which function the video could logically appear. Where does the music leave room? Where can the video appear without flooding the music? The answer is different for every work, which is really amazing.

And how did you set the topics?

In KLÁRI -SUITE, the theme is passion in various facets between creative and destructive forces that "expand" exponentially. I chose this theme because this movement reminds me strongly of a popular compositional principle by Bartók, which is also found in the Klári-songs already appears. He liked to use the proportions of the golden ratio or the Fibonacci number sequence in his works. And so the video shows this growth as a large arc over the entire evening. This makes it look like an enlargement of his compositional principle. The colors also play an important role: black and white + blurred develop into fast + colorful.

How does the audience react to your work? Can the audience understand it? Or do you have to give a special introduction?

First of all, we were all delighted that we were able to welcome a very broad spectrum of interested people! Chamber music lovers, as well as people who are otherwise more interested in theater and don't go to a classical concert, but also old and young people alike - you can't even say that it's a specific target group! That is very nice.

Apparently the concept worked. The video art was clearly a bridge for some of the audience, another gateway to the world of classical music, and at the same time the connoisseurs were able to follow the compositional concept of the program.