Latest 27/02/24

The eminent poet and playwright Hywel John and I’s poetry and piano epic ‘The Tsar’ , which we recorded in the Funkhaus in late 2022, and recently released on all streaming platforms, has been picked up by the prominent newspaper ‘Taz’ and given a beautifully written review by Russian theatre journalist Katja Kollman. Read the review here (in German). I have posted the English translation in full below:

“Tones trickle from a piano in the Berlin broadcasting centre on Nalepastrasse. Deep and unsettling at first, then high and lonely. Decelerated, sparkling major notes, flanked by tenderly intoned minor chords, weave themselves into this animated silence in the ghostly old GDR building. Melancholy pervades the improvisation. British artist Robert Connor has the room to himself for a good five minutes before a deep voice joins in on the piano sound. With the lines "As circles are rejoined and war begins / My friend in madness at the bar still sings", his colleague Hywel John catapults his audience out of contemplative listening. He announces the coordinates that are important to him in the first movement: there is war again in Europe. And: the scene of the action is an unnamed bar in Berlin. John's voice seems rushed.

And Hywel John, who actually works as an actor and dramaturge, makes this sound credible, as if he were being followed by someone. Over the next 30 minutes, he will move through 5mes and places reciting and yet never leave Berlin as a setting. Connor is Scottish and John is Welsh. The duo recorded their joint debut album "The Tsar" in the former broadcasting centre of GDR radio and dedicate it to their adopted home.

John's poem allows an "I" to speak that is permeable to all 5me levels. Nevertheless, the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine is a recurring theme on the surface of the text, for example as a Ukrainian tree that is in sight and must be freed. The monologue resembles a powerful stream of consciousness being forced out of someone in Berlin's nightlife. Images are sketched in which the epochs regularly overlap. The Second World War also comes close in John's lecture. The USSR and Russia too. That is why he repeatedly intersperses German and Russian words in his long poem: Nein and njet, ja and da as well as Deutsche, genau, Schwein and Führer. Irony is far from his mind.

Pathos-free into the depths

The Tsar's view of Berlin is melancholic and empathetic. In a stream of consciousness, a view of a metropolis emerges that sees through the banalities of everyday life and goes into depth without pathos. Connor weaves a tapestry of sound on the piano that has the same dramaturgical function as expressionist silent film music. One hundred years ago, Dmitri Shostakovich created atmosphere, fun and excitement in the cinema as a pianist. And in 2024, Connor sits at the grand piano in the Funkhaus and creates an independent sound layer to the galloping text. As a result, there are often several levels of association in front of your inner eye. Connor develops minor key sequences that feel like slowly rocking waves. While the lyrics tell of bunkers, children playing and a certain Vlad in the bar, the piano waves push forward more and more clearly. Images develop in which Berlin is slowly flooded by peaceful, unexcited waves, a painting of bizarre beauty.

The only person John's "I" speaks to is Vlad. Vlad is short for Vladimir. A common Russian first name - and Putin's first name. John's "I" texts Vlad without explicitly naming the dictator: "Tsars aren't real / Don't you see? / You're not really rich, nor great / And if you get your wish to butcher for eternity / The ditch you dig for everyone will be yours too." Here, the theatrical in the forms of representation of totalitarian states is located in the theatre, i.e. in fiction, and not in reality. In the next sentence, Vlad is denied greatness. Then the succinct statement: "And if you rule forever and dig a pit for many, you too will fall into it at some point."

In the last sentence, John breathes exhaustedly: "No more fear. Never." Connor's fingers run from minor to major. Chords swing upwards, lightness spreads. For a moment, even the melancholy disappears. The extremely low minor note that sounds in the finale is like a sledgehammer. Now quickly focus on the head: There is still the peacefully flooded Berlin.”

Katja Kollman