Karsten Riedel & Franui
Fool of Love

Village Pop and Urban Romanticism
By Christian Seiler

These songs appear so magical because some things about them are not right. The melodies, catchy and set with masterly skill: that’s pop music, isn’t it? But what is he singing, the man with the velvet voice? Verses from a different time, certainly, passionate songs full of entreaties and desire; and that rhythm sneaking up suddenly from behind comes from the trapezoidal body of a hammered dulcimer. Gently it sets the sad story in motion, plink plink plinkplink, until over the melodic arches the furioso of a village brass band breaks loose, transferring the singer’s drama to the village square, m-ta m-ta; then a loud bang!, the wind section plays a fanfare, and after that: blessed silence.

The pianist, guitarist and singer Karsten Riedel is an impressive gure, with his colorful arms and the straightforward look in his eyes. He grew up in the Ruhr valley, where he trained in the underground trades of ska and punk; and he has held on to his wilder nature even a er getting a job with the theater, where he was assigned quite a different set of tasks.

At the theater Karsten Riedel bumped into the musicians of Franui, who, with classical virtuosity, have succeeded in cutting a swath through the accustomed perception of folk music, and in their new interpretations of the lied oeuvres of Schubert, Brahms and Mahler demonstrate how Romantic songs are meant to sound in this day and age. Riedel and Franui took a fancy to each other. They rehearsed eight songs for the opening of the 2011/12 season of Vienna’s Burgtheater, delighting in their mutually discovered qualities: Karsten Riedel’s vocalist presence and melodic power, and the smart, finely knitted and sometimes cheerfully jangling sound of Franui.

Matthias Hartmann, the Burgtheater’s director, was in raptures. He decreed an evening with Riedel & Franui, and defined a theme: William Shakespeare’s Sonnets. The performance was assigned a title, “Fool of Love,” and a cast of exceptional actresses and actors including a puppeteer. Their monologues provide a framework for the songs written by Riedel and Franui to go with Shakespeare’s words.

“There has been more nonsense written about Shakespeare’s Sonnets than about any other piece of literature extant,” the poet W. H. Auden once remarked. He referred to all the helpless attempts of exegetes to decode, and thus profane, the long-lasting mystery of these poems. Riedel and Franui do just the opposite. Without commenting on Shakespeare’s verses they allow the sound, the mysticism, the enigma and anachronism to ooze into their own emotional cosmos, knitting a new garb of music and sound for these words. Lyrics written some four-hundred years ago snugly fit into the sophisticated turns and twists of the melodies, which have more in common with Stephin Merritt’s miniatures than with Franz Schubert’s Shakespearean lieder; yet they surrender as much to the sound of the words as to the sometimes delicate, sometimes hefty arrangements of Franui. Resolutely these songs show how far the erstwhile lieder have come in the meantime. [...]

Karsten Riedel

He first began to play the piano when he was five years old and wanted to become a pianist. But his love of song-writing, and his gift for it, soon took charge, and at the age of 14 he began to do multitrack recordings on an old double deck cassette player in his small, badly dusted room back home, where he had meanwhile also assembled a drum kit, a bass, and various guitars and synthesizers. At that time Riedel also joined a number of punk, soul, ska, reggae and industrial bands, at one point playing in as many as six bands at the same time. When he was 16 he began to expand his geographical sphere of activity. His musical enthusiasm took him through Germany, to Poland, France, Eng-land, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, and as far as Japan and Jamaica, where his jobs included guest performances as a bassist, drummer, rhythm guitarist or keyboarder, working as a producer in the studio, choir singing in pop music productions, or writing lm scores or music for WDR audio plays.

In 2002 Karsten Riedel got an engagement at the Ruhrtriennale festival as a singer in the production Deutschland, deine Lieder directed by Matthias Hartmann. This was the starting point for numerous composing commissions and engagements as a musician from theaters in Bochum, Oberhausen, Essen, Berlin, Hamburg, Zurich and Vienna, where he collaborated in productions such as Einordnen, Ausflug, 1979, Hauptmann v. Köpenick, Clavigo, Liliom, Antigone, Vor Sonnenaufgang, Woyzeck, A Tribute to Johnny Cash, Ivanov, Othello, A Clockwork Orange, Ein Sommernachtstraum, Ein Flanellnachthemd, Was ihr wollt, Käthchen von Heilbronn, Das goldene Vlies, Traumnovelle, Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törless, Das wird schon, Troja, Krieg und Frieden, Kleiner Mann – was nun?, Die Ratten, etc. Riedel collaborated e. g. with the cello quartet of the Bochum Symphony Orchestra, and caused a sensation with a solo piano show dedicated to Rio Reiser. The play Die Farbe Schwarz, a predecessor to Fool of Love based on German translations of the Sonnets, was presented in Bochum. Karsten Riedel lives in Bochum with his wife and his three children.

FRANUI
Musicbanda

Franui is the name of a mountain pasture in Innervillgraten/Austria, a small East Tyrolean village located 1,402 meters above sea level where most of the Franui musicians grew up. The word is of Rhaeto-Romanic origin and refers to the proximity of Innervillgraten to the Ladin-speaking region in the Dolomite Alps. The Musicbanda, who have been playing together in nearly the same line-up since 1993, produce an immediately recognizable sound due to the special blend of woodwind and brass, bowed and other string instruments.

Franui are frequently invited to perform at major festivals and venues, e.g. Wiener Festwochen, Burgtheater Wien, Salzburger Festspiele, Bregenzer Festspiele, Ruhrtriennale, Radialsystem V Berlin, Philharmonie and Grand éatre Luxembourg, Les Nuits de Fourvière Lyon, Tiroler Festspiele Erl, KunstFestSpiele Herrenhausen, Schauspielhaus Hamburg, Kunstfest Pélerinages Weimar, Flanders Festival Kortrijk, Ludwigsburger Schlossfestspiele.

The year 2005 marked the beginning of an intense collaboration with the ac- tor and director Sven-Eric Bechtolf, who regularly performs with Franui as a reciter. In addition to their concerts the musicians have also realized a number of music theater productions over the years, for example: Schau lange in den dunklen Himmel. Geistervariationen für Schauspieler, Sänger und Musicbanda (KunstFestSpiele Herrenhausen, eater Basel); Meine Bienen. Eine Schneise (Salzburg Festival 2012, libretto: Händl Klaus).

Franui’s CDs (e. g. Mahlerlieder, Brahms Volkslieder and Schubertlieder) are released with the label col legno and have won several prizes (German Record Critics’ Award, Ö1 Pasticcio Award, Toblacher Komponierhäuschen).