Simon Rattle rejigs Munich gig with kinky composer

Simon Rattle rejigs Munich gig with kinky composer

main

norman lebrecht

February 24, 2021

The British maestro will give his first Munich concert next week as chief condcutor designate in a programme reconstructed to his taste.

Among the additions is a work by Georg Friedrich Haas, an Austrian composer who has enjoyed great publicity for his unusual sexual proclivities.

Rattle explains:

In these challenging times, we all have to be light on our feet as programs need to change but still need to be satisfying and have some kind of line through them. The first program originally had Purcell, Adamek and Messiaen together: The funeral music led on to Adamek’s journey between life, death and other worlds, which in turn led to the resurrection explored in the Messiaen. Now the journey is different: Purcell’s dark 17th century masterpiece is the prelude to one of the earliest universally acknowledged masterpieces of the 21st century, Haas’s ‘in vain’, which always seems to me to be exploring the primeval music that could have come BEFORE the beginning of Rheingold. It is also unusual not only for exploring the natural harmonic series so thoroughly, but also for being played in part in total darkness, a challenge for all of us, but with a profoundly moving impact.

‘Winrich Hopp, Artistic Director of the musica viva, had the initial idea to commission the great Czech composer Ondrej Adamek to write a song cycle for my wife, Magdalena Kozena. Ondrej has come up with a work which explores psychological and spiritual journeys between different worlds, using many different types of folk music and wildly varying vocal techniques. It looks both thrilling and powerful, and we are all immensely curious to find out how it will actually sound! That we can do such programs on one day in two concert halls is a huge tribute to the possibilities of Munich, the BRSO and the always enterprising musica viva series.”

Comments

  • A.L. says:

    It is so disrespectful of Rattle to subject his future home to any works by that inconsequential and repugnant freak.

    • Marc says:

      Chillax. It’s the year 2021 – not 1821.

    • Tamino says:

      Only those who do nothing (risky) never do anything wrong. I say bring it on. Let it see the test of performance.
      We need more of such experiments in our concert halls, which sometimes can feel more like an artistic crematorium. Or in a nicer metaphor, like an art museum with marble statues.

      • John Borstlap says:

        Music is for listening, and people who find that too hard, wish for experiments, something that is exciting, and more exciting than sitting quiet and concentrate on what they hear.

        It is remarkable that there are still people nowadays, with all the clear information available everywhere, who innocently go to a classical music concert and expect something more visually lively like a boxing match or a soccer game. It is like visiting the National Gallery and complaining that all those canvasses merely show still images, and don’t move like the TV screen.

        • Tamino says:

          You bark up the wrong tree. I never said people should not listen attentively. To the contrary. I said it should be performed instead of being dismissed on judgement of musical castrati in the gallery. How do they say? The test of the pudding is always in the eating?

  • Rob Keeley says:

    Sadly typical for Sir Simon to fall for this kind of banal and pretentious pseudery.

  • Alan says:

    I heard this work at Huddersfield and was totally unmoved.

  • Anon says:

    Usual Rattle . Trying to shock and thus gain publicity.

  • IP says:

    What matters is that the gentleman is composer of “politically charged music”. To get an idea, register for one of the “upcoming events” at http://www.mollena.com, e.g. “Smut Slam Berlin”.

  • Pedro says:

    I remember attending a concert in Brussels by the BPO and Rattle with a terrible Haas work. The rest of the program – La Mer and Brahms 3 – was not good either, so it’s not only Haas fault.

    • John Borstlap says:

      But that is mostly the result of the impact of such ‘works’ on the players’ abilities. Namely, music is not merely the exercising of certain physical movements and precise placing of certain organised notes. The spirit of the music has to be born from the emotional involvement of the players who are, all of them, musicians in their own right. Put them through a sonic work and they will need quite some time to restore their musical instincts.

      I once exposed myself, against better advice, to the BPO playing a long, pretentious nonsensical amateurish splintered sound art piece by well-know German composer [redacted], after which the audience could restore itself in the interval (lots of sombre faces there), but Mahler IV which was the item after the interval, suffered from incoherent ensemble, diffuse balance, uninspired intonation – it simply did not come off the ground in spite of the immense efforts of Rattle. The players were obviously emotionally disrupted, as could be seen from their facial expression. Rattle does not understand these things.

      • Barry Guerrero says:

        Rattle is generally a good Mahler conductor, and sometimes really good. But I don’t think he’s ever done a truly knock-out performance of Mahler 4. The players might have been physically fatigued too.

      • buxtehude says:

        NL why not let us see the composer’s name? Are strong opinions on musical quality necessarily libelous?

  • Concertgoer says:

    Not sure that “concert” is the word given that the venue serves only as a broadcasting studio.

    • Tamino says:

      concertare is translated in musical terms simply as „playing together“. So of course you can have a concert in a radio studio. With a remote audience. Just use your imagination to its mediocre potential at least.

  • Wise Guy says:

    Gross. Gross compositions, gross composer.

  • The View from America says:

    Oh, joy.

  • M McAlpine says:

    What a good thing he’s far from these shores so we don’t have to endure this rubbish!

  • CROGERS says:

    Did Haas ever hurt anybody with his sexual proclivities?

  • Greg Bottini says:

    “KINKY COMPOSER”?
    Who cares what Haas’ personal lifestyle is, even though he himself might talk about it?
    Gesualdo was a murderer, Bruckner liked to look at dead bodies, Grainger beat his wife, and Orff was a Nazi.
    So what? In the concert hall, only the music should count.

  • HugoPreuss says:

    Just listened to the “Konzert für Klangwerk (percussion) und Orchester” by Haas. Not necessarily my favorite music, but frankly I’d prefer to have something new a bit more often in our stable and stale concert programs, instead of mostly works everyone knows.

    Mind you, this also applies to unjustly neglected composers of the past. Anyone for Joachim Raff, Pedro Miguel Marqués, Emilie Mayer, Cipriani Potter? I would love to hear them at least once in a blue moon. Same goes for contemporaries like Haas.

    And no, I don’t live in Berlin, Vienna, London or Paris, but in the German provinces. Thankfully, with several professional orchestras and opera houses nearby. But if they all play the same stuff over and over and over…

  • Hmus says:

    Too bad it isn’t PAVEL Haas getting performed. There was a composer worth hearing.

  • V.Lind says:

    I don’t know anything about Haas’ music. But I am flummoxed trying to figure out what his sexual tastes, distasteful though they may be to a lot of us, have to do with anything.

  • Genius Repairman says:

    Simon Rattle loves the Haas work In Vain and hails it as a 21st Century masterpiece. He is entitled to his opinion and taste, and as a conductor, has a lot of sway in what he conducts. If the orchestra and audience have issues then surely Rattle will move on.

  • reniar says:

    i never thought that the classical scene is so full of bullies. very sad to read all these comments. by the way, haas was voted most important living composer by leading festival producers and journalists in 2017.

    https://www.ricordi.com/en-US/News/2017/01/Expert-survey-Haas.aspx

  • MOST READ TODAY: