Tough cuts at Klaus Tennstedt’s old orchestra
mainFor nine years before he escaped in 1971 from the police state that was East Germany, Klaus Tennstedt was music director of the state orchestra and theatre in Schwerin. It was a Baltic town where he enjoyed the seascape and a good deal more freedom of speech than he had found possible in Dresden and Berlin. He always talked fondly of the place and of its musicians.
Now we read of plans to merge two theatres in the region and cut 61 jobs, 17 of them musicians.
Klaus, bless his memory, would have wept.
This has been on the cards for a long time. The Minister of Culture was the subject of quite a hostile interview a few years ago when he mooted the possibility of fusing Mecklenburg-Vorpommern’s theatres, his apparent ignorance of anything artistic being his strength as he steamrollered his reform through, despite considerable political and public opposition.
Those cuts do not affect Tennstedt’s old orchestra which is the Mecklenburgische Staatskapelle in Schwerin, but two smaller orchestras in the eastern part of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. It just says Schwerin at the beginning of the article because that is the capital of the state and where those decisions were made.