Five grand pianos and eleven pianos are on their way to a storage facility in Breda. They are not just a collection of musical instruments. The Erards, Bösendorfers, Bechsteins and Blüthners are characters: playing witnesses in the musical theater performance Piano tuning, an account of looted art and remorse of conscience. From Wednesday is Piano tuning on display for four days in a removal shed at Tilburgseweg in Breda. The performance then travels to De Gasfabriek in Deventer and Museum ‘t Kromhout in Amsterdam.
Actor and theater maker Klemens Patijn (45), creator of Piano tuning, had his black hair cut into a 1930s headpiece especially for the tour, with a tight parting and the ears clearly visible. ‘We give these wings with new compositions, close harmony and playing a voice in such a butt ticker, a tailcoat for concert pianists. During the Second World War they were robbed from the houses of Jewish families. They confront piano tuner Jacobus Kromm, played by Jaap Dieleman, with the hidden stories about their origin and the dramatic lives of the rightful owners. For example, Kromm’s conscience gets into a fight with ten music-making hands and fifty tapping fingers. Making these looted instruments sound pure takes on an uneasy connotation.’
The idea for a music theater performance about current controversies surrounding looted art arose eight years ago when the actor, known for films and television series such as The Hell of ’63, War winter, Cops Maastricht and CastingX , was asked to participate in a graduation film. ‘A student in her mid-twenties had made her antique bathroom in a capital house in Amsterdam Oud-Zuid available as a shooting location. Later the whole house turned out to be her property. Her brother and sister also owned such a monumental villa, given to them by a grandfather. As a broker during the war, he had bought these houses for next to nothing. I was immediately caught up in the question: can you now enjoy property that may have been acquired illegally? Isn’t it our duty to at least be curious about its provenance?’
Patijn searched the archives of the NIOD, the Netherlands Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, for information about expropriation and war art. He read about the so-called ‘pulsing’, the emptying of homes after deportations by the moving company of the Amsterdam entrepreneur and NSB member Abraham Puls. And as a fanatic piano player, Patijn heard from piano restorer Theodoor Dekker about Nazi stamps in the lids of harpsichords and double grand pianos (paired instruments to be played with four hands). ‘Those very heavy instruments turned out to have been systematically robbed from houses. Trainloads of full have been transported to Germany. Those who have to flee, go into hiding or are deported are not quick to put such a precious instrument somewhere. So I came up with the idea of performing pianos and grand pianos as witnesses in an old piano tuner’s workshop, the lion’s den. They are emotionally connected to the memories of the rightful owners and question the piano tuner about his actions and choices.’
Patijn is not only concerned with looted art, expropriation and the issue of restitution, but also gradually becoming complicit in crimes. ‘It is of course easy to judge in retrospect. But what do you do when you find yourself in such a situation?’ In the performance, Patijn plays the Blüthner grand piano, a character who finds no peace in the fate of history. ‘For me, a sentence from cellist, conductor and resistance fighter Frieda Belinfante is very important in making this project: ‘If you accept the first step, because it really can’t do much harm, a second, a third often follows. And before you know it you’ll be an accomplice.’ I wonder if I would have done the right thing in that time.’
Another quote from Piano tuning that makes you think: ‘Some people owe their good conscience to their bad memory.’ Patijn: ‘In any case, undisclosed stories must be told. That is the fuel for my theater group Goed Gezelschap.’
In 2018 and 2019 Patijn played the double blood performance with Nynke Heeg senang about the undisclosed traumas of their Indian parents and grandparents. ‘As a grandchild, I had a little easier access to my grandfather’s memories of the Japanese camp than my father. He just said to him, “I’ve seen heads roll and that’s what I’m telling you about it.”
For years, Patijn has also kept silent about his own minor trauma, the noises and body shocks he has as a result of Gilles de la Tourette. ‘I was very ashamed of that. The mild tics increase when I’m under stress. Medication, therapy, camouflage, I’ve tried everything, but nothing helped. Until I was on stage. When I act and make music on stage, they stay away. That is a wonderful interplay of narrowing of consciousness and dopamine production.’
Piano tuning by Goed Gezelschap, 19 to 23/10 in Breda, afterwards to be seen in Deventer and Amsterdam.
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