The nauseating smear campaign against Teodor Currentzis has not escaped my notice either. It is part of the ongoing wave of context-free anti-Russia propaganda, one of the most heinous campaigns I have ever witnessed, which immediately found its way within the cultural world. Fortunately, there is also resistance. In Baden-Baden last week, Currentzis was given carte blanche for a concert with MusicAeterna. Even the audience members did not know the program in advance. Which conductor can pull that off?
Author : Georg Etscheit
Sometimes music journalists like Mr. Brüggemann complain that their reviews are printed less and less by the newspapers and that fewer and fewer people attend classical concerts and opera performances. They are right about that. It's true that the audience for classical music has always been manageable, because in order to understand and appreciate the works of the great composers, you need a minimum of education and you have to make some effort while listening. But with corona everything has become much worse.
The international "star circus" has fallen into disrepute
Older listeners and viewers in particular, who used to be mocked with the collective term "Silver Lake," still stay at home because they are afraid of contagion. And the young are only growing in manageable numbers, despite all the "education" programs on which orchestra leaders now devote much energy. Blissful times, when there were still "critic popes" like Joachim Kaiser and every second TV thriller like "Derrick," "Der Alte" or "Tatort" was accompanied by classical music. Knowledge of this has fallen to zero, and not only among TV editors.
People like Brüggemann are also to blame for the constantly dwindling relevance of the achievements of Western musical culture. With their openly displayed aversion to everything conservative and educated, they are sawing at the branch on which they themselves are sitting. They seem like those enlightened French aristocrats in the final phase of the Ancien Regime who took care of their enemies' business and then found themselves on the guillotine.
In order to fill the concert halls at least halfway, classical music stars have never been as valuable as they are today. Super divas such as Anna Netrebko, who have the public at their feet, the busy Chinese keyboard lion Lang Lang or the conductor Valery Gergiev, who has now been declared persona non grata in the West. But the international "star circus" has fallen into disrepute; it is considered outmoded in democratic times and, moreover, harmful to the climate. The aversion to heroes of all kinds and their veneration also affects the heroes of the podiums. People like Herbert von Karajan, whom every child knew, regardless of whether there were pop or classical records in the cupboard at home, have become unthinkable today, not least because of Karajan's Nazi involvement. Of course, they still exist, the excellent young and not-so-young conductors (and a few female conductors, too), but many no longer want to make a fuss about themselves and modestly embark on concert tours by train to neighboring countries, like the environmentally conscious music director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, Vladimir Jurowski. But who knows Mr. Jurowski? And who knows Jakub Hrůša, the new, highly praised music director of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London, or Klaus Mäkelä, the young head of the Orchestre de Paris and future director of the renowned Amsterdam Concertgebouw, who has also been praised in the feuilletons as a shooting star?
Mood mongering via newsletter
So the few real stars who (still) exist and want to be such should be nurtured and cared for, because they are indispensable as draught horses. But activist self-promoters like Brüggemann do the opposite. For months, the journalist has been railing on his blog against the dazzling star amongst conductors, Teodor Currentzis, and he will probably not stop until he has scared him away from all German or, better yet, all "Western" podiums. Currentzis' misfortune: the Greek-born conductor was trained in Russia in the 1990s and initially made his career there, in Novosibirsk, the mention of which makes non-Russian conductors shiver, as well as in Perm in the Urals, where he began his international career as the "Miracle of Perm."
Currentzis and his ensembles playing with period instruments founded in Novosibirsk under the MusicAeterna brand - an orchestra and two chamber choirs - became the flagship of the Salzburg Festival under artistic director Markus Hinterhäuser, among others. Three years ago, the Greek-Russian artist, who also caused a sensation with his punky outfit and who succeeds in appealing to a younger audience, was also appointed the new principal conductor of the SWR Symphony Orchestra. The appointment was considered a minor sensation and a liberating blow for the SWR, which had just merged two renowned symphony orchestras into a single new orchestra in order to save money, and had received a lot of criticism for doing so.
Then Vladimir Putin let his soldiers march into Ukraine and everything changed. After the diva Anna Netrebko and Valery Gergiev, the head of the Munich Philharmonic, who was dismissed by the Munich City Council because of his closeness to Putin's regime, Currentzis was also caught. Axel Brüggemann launched a real campaign against the conductor. He accused him of not having sufficiently distanced himself from Putin. Moreover, his ensembles and tours were sponsored by a bank sanctioned by the EU and the Russian energy company Gazprom. Almost every issue of his newsletter features anti-Currentzis sentiment.
Never expressed political views
The fact that Hinterhäuser, the head of the Salzburg Festival, unwaveringly stuck to his star, who was the acclaimed center of the opera and concert program in the summer, went against Brüggemann's grain. Again and again, he dug up new, allegedly incriminating material and mobilized the Internet mob to checkmate Currentzis and with him Hinterhäuser. So far with only moderate success. In November, the new program for the 2023 Salzburg Festival season will be announced. It will be interesting to see whether Currentzis, whom Hinterhäuser had demonstratively defended on several occasions, will be back.
If you ask insiders not named Brüggemann, you will hear the following assessment of the Currentzis case: Why should an artist who, according to all available sources, has never explicitly expressed himself politically, now be forced to take an "unequivocal" position and thereby possibly expose himself and his ensembles to the revenge of Putin and his followers? With Gergiev, the case is different, they say. He has never made a secret of the fact that he appreciates Putin, and he publicly supported the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Now he has to spoon out the soup he made for himself.
Currentzis is far less unambiguous than Gergiev. He is surrounded by the mysterious aura of the rebel and border crosser, who is able to enchant and seduce his audience. He is not undisputed - some consider him a brilliant sound magician, others a charlatan. Currentzis rarely gives interviews, and when he does, they revolve around his inner worlds, which he presents to the audience in a murmuring tone: "Many keys can fit into the doors of a house, but not everyone will open the door, only one will," he said in a richly puzzled SWR interview. "That's why we need this magic spell in the music that leads the sound to the center of the temple, that helps us tear down the ceiling with our prayers and see the light."
Ukraine war not an issue in interview
There may also be marketing calculations behind such meaningful vocabulary, but one may assume that Currentzis did not go to Russia only for career reasons. Rather, the Greek, who was socialized in Orthodoxy, has a lot in common with this huge country and its culture, which is shaped by the mystical church of the East, the much-cited "Russian soul," a country that he does not want to turn his back on, even (or especially) now. Should he be condemned for this?
Probably also as a reaction to the campaign of Brüggemann and his media henchmen, Currentzis recently launched a new, internationally staffed orchestra called "Utopia". This time, the financial backer is explicitly not a Russian oligarch bank, but presumably the recently deceased Austrian billionaire Dietrich Mateschitz, founder of the Red Bull Group, whose station ServusTV is one of the few to also offer a platform to critics of the corona measures. For this, Mateschitz is berated in the mainstream media as a right-wing populist. ServusTV also broadcast an exclusive interview with Currentzis during the Salzburg Festival season on August 4, which was conducted by the former head of the Vienna State Opera, Ioan Holender, and in which, not only to Brüggemann's annoyance, the Ukraine war was not mentioned at all.
On the day of the first Utopia concert in the Luxembourg Philharmonie on October 4, the director of the Cologne Philharmonie appeared before the press and announced that a performance by Currentzis with the SWR Symphony Orchestra in his house had been canceled. The activities and financing of his ensembles MusicAeterna and also Utopia suggested that Currentzis was "very close to the Russian regime," was the reason given by Intendant Louwrens Langevoort for the cancellation. A short time later, it was announced that Currentzis' contract as head of the SWR Symphony Orchestra would not be extended beyond 2024. Currentzis' departure from Stuttgart had allegedly been planned for some time, and there are also rumors of disagreements between him and the orchestra. However, you have to be a scoundrel not to think that the Ukraine war played a role here, too, and that Axel Brüggemann might have had his fingers in the pie again.
"Moscow Mule" at the intermission buffet
But the front against Currentzis is fragile. The Munich concert agent Andreas Schessl is holding on to a concert scheduled for December at the Isarphilharmonie with Currentzis at the helm of the SWR Orchestra. Currentzis may even give guest performances with his Russian MusicAeterna ensembles at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden and the Konzerthaus Dortmund. And even in the politically so correct capital Berlin, the new Utopia Orchestra was able to make an acclaimed appearance. "No protests outside the entrances, no ill-feeling in the hall because of Currentzis' controversial political stance," noted the Berliner Tagesspiegel the other day, almost indignantly.
The audience seems to be hardly interested in the egg dance of the artistic directors and concert agents under the thumb of a music writer who, according to one insider, is "reasonably well known". A media man concerned above all with his own image, who on the occasion of a Currentzis concert in the Vienna Konzerthaus, whose director Matthias Naske is also on Brüggemann's hit list, even got upset about the fact that the cocktail "Moscow Mule" was served at the intermission buffet.
In Baden-Baden, the unthinkable happened. Benedikt Stampa, artistic director of the Festspielhaus there, said at the presentation of the program for the new season - which again included the soprano Anna Netrebko, now always dubbed as "controversial" - that "forgiveness" was possible even for a musical arch-cheat like Valery Gergiev.