Jihad and the disenchanted youth

Fikry el Azzouzi: Wir da draussen ISBN 978-3-8321-9829-9 ⭐️ The plot is rather straightforward: A Moroccan immigrant living in Belgium and experiencing social exclusion turns to drugs, sex, violence, crime and finally jihadism. All would have been well if the author had explored the deeper emotions of the main character or gone to the roots of the young man’s disenchantment. Instead he delivers a honest description of a human condition as it has been described many times before – nothing new there. The story remains superficial, predictable and without much interest. The best one can say is that el Azzouzi’s vulgar language is appropriate to the brutality of the subject. It remains nevertheless a 100 percent disappointment.

Since this book did not inspire me at all, I cannot provide a link to any appropiate classical music. I have no such music.

Austria on the road to disaster

Hans-Peter Siebenhaar: Österreich – Die zerrissene Republik ISBN 978-3-280-05646-2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Austria is one of my favourite holiday destinations and it is heartbreaking to read how unfit for future this country is. Corruption, xenophobia, absence of corporate governance, bureaucratic madness, disrespect for the natural ressources and the inability to redress the mistakes of the past seem to characterize the ruling class of politicians and businessmen. An interesting if sobering view on Austria. Many typos, several factual mistakes and a shallow conclusion diminished my reading pleasure.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a keen observer of what was wrong in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire and his operas allude to quite a number of highly political issues such as the fact that noblemen like Don Giovanni could act outside the law:

Rape, murder, love and vengence in two acts

More than just a love story

Haruki Murakami: Naokos Lächeln. ISBN 978-3-442-73050-6 (English title: Norwegian Wood) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The German edition has the subtitle “Just a love story”. Just a love story? No, this novel is much more. A philosophical essay about love, sexuality, personality development, about adulthood and responsibility. Most important it is a book about men and how lost they are in the realm of conflicting emotions. What a subject! And then there is Murakami’s language that I admire greatly: poetic where poetry is useful, brutally realistic where reality hits the main character, a young Japanese student, in his face. In  many respects this novel reminds me of J. D. Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye” – a book I had to read several times befire I grasped its essence.

Murakami’s novel is a treasure box full allusions to great music: the Beatles obviously (see the English title), jazz legends like Miles Davis and Sarah Vaughn, but then we find Mozart, Ravel and Brahms. One piece I often listened to while reading this novel was Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 in B flat major:

Brahms’ unfulfilled love – a detached look back

Robert Schumann in Siberia


Judith W. Taschler: Roman ohne U 
ISBN 978-3-7117-2018-4 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ A truly gripping novel about an Austria family covering several generations. A romance between a girl and a boy in a Soviet Gulag, a father-son story, broken hearts and broken promises and loads of family secrets revealed as the story develops. An excellent read.

The girl in the Gulag, Ludovica, is a pianist and she performs Robert Schumann’s Kinderszenen, Op. 15 for the commanding officer in the Siberian camp, where she tries to escape from:

Cute little things about children’s daydreams

Liszt – Pathfinder in the post-Romantic era


Michael Stegemann: Franz Liszt – Genie im Abseits. ISBN 978-3-492-05429-4 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ What a man! What a book! This biography presents the life and works of the composer Franz Liszt in many fascinating details and highlights the avantgardistic ideas he had about music. The number of enemies he made and the (flimsy) aesthetic arguments his enemies put forward to discredit Liszt’s music is a solid testimony of the composer’s forsight about the post-Romantic development of music. Arguments one hears again a century and a half later about the Neue Musik, classical compositions of the 20th and 21st century. Most interesting is also the description of Liszt’s ambivalent relationship to his son-in-law, Richard Wagner, and the fact that he supported many young composers and pianists with sound advice, with money and with opportunities to perform and thus forge a reputation of their own. Highly recommended reading for anyone interested in music history!

A symphonic poem written by Franz Liszt that I truly love despite the ambivalent feelings it triggers is Les Préludes:

How  a Romantic composer got hijacked by the Nazis