Yellow Lounge Berlin
A delightful discovery today courtesy of Helen Pidd and The Guardian: Yellow Lounge in Berlin. The premise is classical music in a club, with the idea of Yellow Lounge thought up by Deutsche Grammophon’s Ruud de Sera. The first concert was in Februrary 2001 and since then, performers such as the Emerson and Faure Quartets, Mischa Maisky, Hélène Grimaud, Anne Sofie von Otter, The Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Hilary Hahn/Natalie Zhu and Janine Jansen have rocked it with the kids, as it were. There was even a solo harpist one evening.
Pidd reports, “The Yellow Lounge can charge just €5 for entry because it is backed by the record company Universal. Canisius is free to play what he likes and book who he wants, but there do tend to be a lot of Universal acts on the bill…” So the whole endeavour may not be as altruistic as it initially sounded but who cares? The kids dig it.
Here is Hélène Grimaud playing the second movement of Beethoven Op 109 in August of 2007. Warning: Blair Witch-style phone recording in operation.
