Chanson singer Anna Depenbusch in the pavilion
Hanover, as Anna Depenbusch explains between two songs, especially the pavilion, is always an important station for her: “I had one of my first appearances as a singer here,” she says, “as a background singer in a salsa band.” Depenbusch talks a lot in general between her songs: From Frau Rachhals, her grand piano from the 1920s, which has been extensively restored and is at her home in Hamburg. About her friends and acquaintances, who sooner or later all appear in her songs. About her current album “Echtzeit” and how nervous she was when she recorded it in direct vinyl editing – i.e. scratched live onto a vinyl disc without a break: “You have to feel the pauses between the songs,” she says.
The station in Hanover is the second in the current tour of the chanson singer, after Wolfsburg. She’s still a little nervous: “It’s like a first date,” she says, and she gambles right at the beginning, with the song “ABC”, starts again, laughs, and gambles again until she gets it right.
The funniest things
In fact, that doesn’t matter: Depenbusch didn’t bring a band with her, she just sits with a grand piano under a Molton skirt that’s like a circus tent and clearly enjoys playing in front of an audience for the first time in two years. It’s an exciting time for concerts, she says, “because we all lack a bit of routine. The funniest things happen there.”
But there is of course more than charming announcements and elegantly overplayed gambles: Depenbusch is a very versatile chanson singer, with a voice that manages to be delicately reserved and at the same time brutally present. Who sings about her love for sailors as well as about the neighbor’s noisy sex, who can sing about the mathematician Emmy Noether in “Kingfisher Woman” as well as the romantic entanglements of her circle of friends in “Tim loves Tina”.
A touch of Edith Piaf
It all comes across as airy, relaxed, sometimes tragic, sometimes intricately constructed, but never as an end in itself. Nevertheless, there is little friction: The songs develop – probably solved with the familiar DNA of Edith Piaf or Tori Amos – sing-along melodies, clapping-along beats, circumnavigate the kitsch, but the stories then usually open up with a sweet twist or a punch line. So the concert feels very homely. Depenbusch talks and jokes with the audience as if there were a few guests in her living room for whom she is playing a few plays on a nice evening.
On March 16th, Ina Paule Klink will come to the pavilion with her band, on March 19th Kari Bremnes will sing there.
By Jan Fischer