Matthias Heilein is a physician and a singer, and the benefit gala Doc Heilein and Friends brings the two together. The fourth concert in the series took place on 20 January 2023 at the Tonhalle Düsseldorf, with a reception before and after the performance. Its theme was accompaniment — of the ill, of the dying, of one another — and the passage between the worlds; “faith, love, medical treatment and accompaniment have infinite healing power”, Heilein writes in the booklet. The title of the evening sets a wink against that: the hit song Ich will keine Schokolade opens the second CD and gives the programme its name.
The selection moves deliberately between genres. One Moment In Time and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Von guten Mächten in Siegfried Fietz’s setting are followed by The Prayer and the gospel His Eye Is On The Sparrow. Between them stand German songs such as Flieg, kleiner Vogel by Helmut Jost, Gnade für die Welt, An guten Tagen and Halt dich an mir fest, along with Have A Little Faith In Me, I Wanna Know The Power and, closing the first CD, Lean On Me. The second CD places Delibes’s Les Filles de Cadix and Richard Strauss’s Morgen beside Shallow and Imagine, Cilea’s Io son l’umile ancella beside The Phantom of the Opera. Puccini’s Oh mio babbino caro is sung by Alexandra von der Weth, Sting’s Fragile by Anna Dorothea Mutterer with Timo Böcking. The encores at the end of the second CD are Udo Jürgens’s Was wichtig ist and Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah.
Several pieces come from the circle of performers itself: Take My Hand by Timo Böcking, Fürchte dich nicht by Katja Zimmermann, Sonic Strings by Francesca Reyter. The forces change from number to number — a solo here, a duet there, then the whole vocal ensemble with the band. Among those heard are Eva Schäfer, Miriam Schäfer, Sarah Bouwers, Ricardo Marinello, Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, Nils Wanderer, Pamela Falcon, Dennis LeGree, Leslie Jost, Lewin Blümel, Anna Grillmeier, Uta Wiedersprecher, Björn Bergs, Tomas Kildisius and Matthias Heilein himself. Also on the programme are Was uns bleibt, Follow Me, St. Petersburg, Denn der Geist and My Way.
The live recording has been left uncut, with the applause and the announcements of the evening. Heilein sums the evening up: together they celebrated life, love, grace and hope. The two CDs run 68:19 and 58:04; the twelve-page booklet names the soloists for every number as well as the accompanying band. The album was released the same year on Undine. The series continues: at the end of the booklet Heilein announces the next benefit gala.