What maestros loved about Angela Merkel
News
A BR report collates conductor responses to the Chancellor’s departure from a new book about her.
Daniel Barenboim: “She never lets herself be invited to operas or concerts, but buys her tickets herself. Always!”
Simon Rattle: ‘At the height of the refugee crisis, she came with her husband and listened to Pelléas et Mélisande for three and a half hours… She loves classical music (…) and her decision to open the borders at short notice last autumn was one of the most courageous political gestures that were made in my lifetime.’ Rattle invited her home and cooked dinner for the Chancellor couple.
Franz Welser-Möst: ‘As a conductor, I can quickly sense what the questions someone asks me after the concert reveal about their relationship to music. The way Angela Merkel asked me suggested that she was not only interested in music, she was well versed in it.’
Wouldn’t it be fun to see the list of her favorite 20 recordings?
She would make a great guest on Desert Island Discs. I’d listen!
Here are the three songs she chose for her farewell (Knef, Nina Hagen and a hymn) https://www.fr.de/politik/grosser-zapfenstreich-heute-tv-live-stream-angela-merkel-zdf-cdu-verabschiedung-kanzlerin-91151389.html
no Wagner ;-(
What a great shame the same cannot be said of UK Political Leaders!
Even if they do listen and like classical music [some must do?] they would never dare come out publicly and say so.
Safer to stick with popular entertainers and football!
Is that a comment about the UK?
“Is that a comment about the UK?”
Amazing how extrapolation is acceptable in some circumstances but not in others.
Merkel’s choice of music for her leaving parade was less impressive.
In the past, Edward Heath was extremely interested in classical music. And had it not been for Jennie Lee, the Minister of the Arts in Harold Wilson’s first government, a lot of the country’s artistic development would never have taken place.
Her Variant Symphony has a coda full of lies.