Currentzis ‘is a perverted trapeze act’, says top German composer
NewsThe Greek-Russian conductor Teodor Currentzis, who takes subsidies from Gazprom and other frontline fighters on Puti9n’s war, has come under fire from the influential German composer Moritz Eggert. Currentzis has swapped his ‘Eterna’ orchestra for another called ‘Utopia’, but his bookings are dying up.
Vienna’s Konzerthaus has shut its doors and Der Standard reports that his only dates next season are in Brescia and Antwerp, hardly the summits of the music world. Currentzis, who remains aligned with Putin’s view of reality, clings to a post at Southwestgerman Radio (SWR).
Here’s what Eggert tells him this morning:
This can’t go on. What you are doing is a perverted trapeze act, juggling several champagne glasses while balancing on a tightrope and performing the German and Russian national anthems at the same time (don’t ask me how, but it takes an artist to do that).
It’s a tragic trapeze act by a perplexed (or rather restless) performer in the circus dome. How much longer can this go on? How much longer can you dance at all weddings, shake hands with the henchmen and have medals of honour hung around one’s shoulders and then deny them, go on the road with musicians who demand the extermination of the “Ukrainian Nazis” and promote the destruction of the German economy…and at the same time conduct with a clear conscience in, for example, the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie Britten’s “War Requiem” or Shostakovich’s 13th symphony, the latter with a soloist who posted Russian flags immediately after the destruction of the Mariupol theatre, contradicting pretty much everything Shostakovich and Britten wanted their music to express?
How long will that be fine, Teodor Currentzis? Is it really enough, instead of talking nonsense, to look mystically into the camera and utter some babbling and deeply ridiculous generalities about the mystical power of classical music, which is then absorbed by fans, who are happy to be blinded? How much longer can you jet back and forth between Russia and Western Europe, getting finance from lenders that we sanction with good reason? And at the same time making your few remaining loyal supporters, such as the Elbphilharmonie, the Salzburg Festival and above all the SWR, a kind of laughing stock?…
More here.
Ramblings of a jealous nobody
Thanks Mr. Eggert.
I’m assuming that we won’t see you at HIS Mahler 3 in Berlin tomorrow.
…nor at Bruckner’s 9th in Berlin next season.
The letter is political and accusatory. I don’t like the author’s primitive style of writing either.
Such words, written out of emotion, do not contribute to improving a situation but only harden the fronts.
I can only hope that the composer’s output doesn’t lack culture and style.
Most if not all world-changing protests in history were political and with accusatory tone and definitely full of emotions.
And the last paragraph is a logical fallacy – his creative output quality has nothing to do with our topic of discussion just like yours or mine. Even if he is the worst german composer he still has the right to say what he wants and be judged for his thoughts’ quality.
Wonderfully put, Moritz Egger. Thank you. Currentzis mindless drivel and name-changes for his mediocre ensembles are enough to drive one mad.
Now let’s turn the critical light on Baden-Baden, Salzburg and the SWR for the ongoing support for Putin which they and their audiences provide through their endorsement of Currentzis.
No news on Chailly going sick. The world’s most exciting conductor P.Jordan takes over the VPO concerts with Ein Heldenleboo
Top german composer? Who on earth is Eggert? Never heard of him in the first place.
Sounds like a D list composer whose music probably got refused by Currentzis for being so poor in quality, that he got a bit fired up and wanted a shot at revenge, and chose this as the most convenient topic.
Attack the messenger not the message, correct?
The official position of SWR is indeed mind boggling. How can they NOT terminate his contract with immediate effect? This charlatan dances to the tune of any financer and laughs all the way to the bank.
I despise what Russia is doing, it is extremely criminal, but there is a massive irony in Eggert’s comment, “performing the German and Russian national anthems at the same time (don’t ask me how, but it takes an artist to do that).” It is indeed ironic, but Eggert’s obsessive Russophobic polemic hardly improves the situation. His statements would be better if tempered by a consciousness of a horrific history.
Germany killed 27 million people in the USSR, mostly Russians, during WWII. They purposely mass murdered 3 million Russian POWs through slave labor and starvation. (There’s a mass grave of 7000 of them near where I live that were slaves in the Mauser armaments factory.) Germany laid waste to incomprehensible amounts of Russia. One in every four Soviet soldiers was killed to stop Hitler, including 1.2 million in the Battle of Stalingrad which is where Nazi Germany was defeated. Indeed, there are issues when these two national anthems are brought together. When Eggert overlooks this, the ironies scream.
It’s also ironic when Eggert puts the term Ukrainian Nazis in quote marks, even though they were and still are a serious political problem and embarrassment for Ukraine, as even the New York Times has recently noted:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/05/world/europe/nazi-symbols-ukraine.html
To make the quote marks even more ironic, Eggert is a professor in in Bavaria which is one of the most reactionary regions of Europe and still the spiritual home of European Nazism. (And speaking of ironies, it might be noted that the conservatory in Munich is housed in Hitler’s personal office building, the Füherbau.) Bavaria has been ruled by the far-right CSU for all but 3 years since the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany. I hope this isn’t what accounts for Eggert’s blind spot about Ukraine’s problems with the far-right and his seeming denial of that problem. It’s also ironic when Eggert jeers at the SWR in Stuttgart, as if that far more moderate region of Germany needed any lectures from professors housed in the Führerbau in reactionary Bavaria. The optics don’t work much better than those of Currentzis.
Again, Putin is a fool and a war criminal, an absolutely appalling leader, but one should hope that our intellectuals might balance their questionable desire to purge Russian artists while also addressing the 20-year history that followed in 1988 when the wall came down and that played a role in creating this war (even if far less than Russia’s.) This included the Russophobic plans formulated in the late 1970s to encircle and isolate Russia formulated by Carter’s Polish-American national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski. His hatred of Russia was unbounded. Or the equally Russo-phobic stance of Czech-American Madeline Albright who was the national security advisor for the Clintons and led them to lose major opportunities for cooperation with Russia. (See the article below from TRT.) Or the hegemonistic geopolitical strategy formulated by The New American Century to encircle and isolate Russia authored by fanatic ideologues including Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol, Robert Kagan, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld. Or Victoria Nuland, the USA’s current under secretary of state for political affairs, who in 2014 was a lead diplomatic who assisted with the anti-Russian 2014 coup in Ukraine. And not surprisingly, she is the wife of Robert Kagan, one of the founders of the neo-con New American Century. Our country is not in the best of hands, and it has played a considerable role in leading the West and Russia into this disastrous war. But then, Bavaria isn’t one of the best places to discuss the problems with neo-cons.
So much foolishness, vindictiveness, paranoia, and hegemonistic ideals caused us to lose opportunities that could have avoided this war. We now know that neither side can win and that it will end in a cease fire and ongoing cold war similar to the division of Korea. Sadly, this history of hatred fits well with Eggert’s Russophobic obsessions.
Here in the West, the history I’ve outlined is seldom mentioned in the barrage of propaganda from our mainstream media. This article from Turkish Radio and Television provides a concise and readable summation of some of the major lost opportunities:
https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/russia-could-have-joined-nato-but-why-didn-t-they-do-it-55561
And for a third time, this isn’t in any way to justify Putin’s monstrously criminal actions. My point is that we might hope for a bit more intelligence from our intellectual and cultural leaders. I know these views are not welcome in this forum, but there are a few who see the wider truth of the situation.
“It is indeed ironic, but Eggert’s obsessive Russophobic polemic”
“Russophobic” is ruzzian fascist term, invented my ruzzian fascist.
Congrats on spreading their word.
https://press.un.org/en/2023/sc15226.doc.htm
https://snyder.substack.com/p/playing-the-victim
Nonsense. Russophobia has a centuries-long history in Europe. To twist the term for propagandistic reasons toward either side of the war is ridiculous and intellectually superficial.
Russophobia was plainly demonstrated by influential US leaders from the 1970s onward, including Zbigniew Brzezinski and Madeline Albright, both of whom fled Eastern Europe under Stalin. Russophobia was also reflected by the authors of the New American Century who focused on the encirclement and isolation of Russia as a method of maintaining US hegemony in Europe. The actions of these leaders were an important part of what led to this war.
After the division of Germany by the USSR and the terrors of Stalinism, Russophobia became a notable part of postwar German culture that continues with elements of its society to this day. To evade these issues with semantic declarations that attempt to obscure the historical phenomena of Russophobia is just a transparent bit of semantic propaganda. It’s a reminder that nothing suppresses human reason more than war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Russian_sentiment
True words, but most people, also here, are too weak mentally to climb high enough to see that actual horizon and bigger perspective. Most people do not wish to be enlightened, since with enlightenment comes freedom of mind comes hardship of critical thinking.
Says “Nonsense” and continues to spread ruzzian propaganda.
You funny.
Продолжайте в том же духе, товарищ! Путину нужен каждый из вас, олухов!
The destruction of German economy is self inflicted to please the hegemon… If this one composes as he analyses geopolitics…
“The destruction of German economy is self inflicted to please the hegemon”
Maybe that’s enough vodka for today, Ivan.
Shut up, Eggert.
What would you do without Curentzis? No one is interested in you la la la music.
Your comments are so terribly vulgar and simple.
You are a shame for democracy.
Luckily you came here and enlightened us with your fine comment, now it’s all fixed.
Germany’s next top composer?
Nice: Mr. Eggert smartly references Alexander Kluge’s cerebral and celebrated 1968 film “Artisten in der Zirkuskuppel: ratlos” (Artists in the Big Top: Perplexed/Clueless)
One hopes that a professor at Case Western Reserve such as yourself knows that it takes more than an arty allusion to compensate for Eggert’s commentaries known for their jeering, superficiality, and name calling. Germany could do better.
Influential composer?????
“Präsident des Deutschen Komponist:innenverbandes”.
Hahaha.
To follow up: tl;dr. (Google it.)
Average conductor: “Bar six: softer, please.”
Currentzis: “You know, you must make this phrase like a dream. Like a meditation. Like you are striving for that experience that exists between the liminal strivings of sleep and awakeness. Like it has the words which I want you to sing inside while you are playing: ‘I am floating in the colors of a dream. I am floating in the colors of a dream.’ Like it is against reality, in the color of the dream. Once more, please, from bar six. Also, I would maybe play it softer.”
Orchestra musician to colleagues after the long tirade : ” piano instead of mf”
Read the original letter. Well written, well said. Currentzis is a bullshitter and as such he is able to attract and hypnotise the simple crowd with his histrionics. His conducting is all the famous new clothes. And he is a spineless coward.
Isn’t it ironic for a German to be giving moral lessons to a Greek-Russian??!! Absolutely priceless.
No, I don’t think this is ironic. I think Germans snowed the world a lot of fine action and posturing during the last 30 years frankly. watch and learn i’d say. not too much educated in greek politics but can def vouch for russians
Why, may I ask? Germany is currently supporting almost one million Ukrainian refugees as a result of Russia‘s invasion.
Regular readers will know that Sue Sonata Form is strangely Russian friendly. Like Tchaikovsky she has a problem with the development sections.
Eggert’s ego may be massive, and his music crap, but those don’t mean he doesn’t have a point somewhere in there…
Regardless of the case of Mr. Currentzis, Moritz Eggert is as unsophisticated and crude as they come. A genuine self absorbed person with music that match.