Strasbourg cuts its philharmonic
OrchestrasThere’s alarm and despondency at the EU parliamentary capital over a municipal 2.5 percent cut to the 13 million Euros budget of the city orchestra.
There are plans not to replace retiring musicians and to cancel Sunday-morning concerts.
The city has a vibrant young music director, Aziz Shokhakimov. But he’s an Uzbek with little political access.
More here.
I believe Western culture dying in the middle of the EU heart is something many people will approve of, if it was not their initial plan.
“Western culture dying in the middle of the EU”.
You are kidding right?
The Philar as it’s known in Strasbourg has been a 2nd rate orchestra for at least 2 decades. …certainly since the time of that loony Latham Koenig who said he was going to turn it into one of the No1 orchestras in the world. (ha where is L-K now?!)
The musicians laughed at him, and carried on earning good money.
Opera du rhin has kept them going a bit but it also has to share that bit of cake with Mulhouse orchestra – which has improved a lot.
If truth be known the nice restaurants and junkets were kept going by the rarer and rarer sessions of the EU parliament.
It’s widely known in SXB they have been trying to kick out the Strasbourg parliament sessions for more than a decade – supposedly on grounds of cost and who knows what else. It will go SOON, leaving only ECHU.
If Strasbourg is the centre of EU culture that’s based far more on the reliable and very well produced local product called ARTE TV and to a lesser extent FR3.
Arte TV is excellence itself.
Musica is also still held in Strasbourg every september, and there is still Wacken for rock and pop.
I saw a memorable Joe Cocker concert there.
Alsace food is good and so is their wine, so tourism keeps a lot of Alsace going, while the Uni and IT were may in front of other French cities…thanks partly to nearby Basel and Baden-Baden
The other stuff like Strasbourg music festival kept going by the eccentric Harry Lapp was always fighting market share with Spivakov at Colmar.
Better know what you are on about before commenting about Strasbourg eh?
Serge is making the point behind the article Norman links to, which you might want to read if you have French.
Ne veuillez-pas oublier la cathédrale superbe.
ou bien l’orgue Silbermann de l’église Saint-Thomas !
This is the result of the gradual change of EU policy from the earliest beginnings (when culture was implicitly at the heart of the plan: identity confirming, bonding, trusting), towards a materialist, capitalist, quasi-efficient approach, and leaving all the psychological components untouched. Now, that unfarmed, neglected land shows its ugly growth in terms of identity politics, populism and rightwing extremism.
https://www.euronews.com/2020/02/10/europe-the-cultural-argument-view
Indeed ironic that of all places it is Strasbourg that wants to make cuts in it’s orchestra’s budget. It’s the world upside-down.
“The world upside down” is a good description of a certain JB’s “artistic” output.
Don’t you have anything better to do than to feel important by proxy commenting in this god forsaken blog?
Name – without googling – 2 relevant things this orchestra has done?
If they burn the money, that would be even a better investment than to give them to these useless money sucking leeches.
Old farts claiming the end of civilization every time an ensemble that shouldn’t exist in the first place finally disappears is beyond a cliche at this point.
Who said every city needs and orchestra?
I say every city needs an orchestra. And not only every city, but every school needs an orchestra.
Now name two relevant things YOU have done for civilization?
I’m not receiving public funds so its LITERALLY none of your business. Having said that, I’m pretty sure its orders of magnitude more than what you have done.
In fact, It would make sense for a leech living off people’s taxes to have such a distorted view of reality.
Why stop at every school? Every kindergarden! Every Daycare! Every Department store! Every city block!
And by the way, we need money, and don’t you dare not give it to us, its “Culture”….
Its just disgusting…
We pick-up this ‘comment’ with pincers, because it is dripping with spite and frustrated anger. And we put it in the drawer with the collection of ‘Causes’, the ever rumbling noise of people who claim to like classical music but in reality look for a scapegoat of their own unhappy life.
“Name – without googling – 2 relevant things this orchestra has done?”
Challenge accepted.
The Berlioz recordings under John Nelson.
Vincent d’Indy’s symphony no. 3 under Guschlbauer (OK, the piece turned out to be weak, but it fills an important part of the knowledge of an important figure in French music, if not necessarily great composer).
La Perichole under Alain Lombard. Yes, I ultimately prefer the Markevitch version, but I also listen to the Lombard / Strasbourg version with some frequency.
Going back in time, a concert that I will attend if time travel is invented in my lifetime: Bach double concerto with Enescu and Menuhin under the baton of Klemperer. Wow!@
The borderline psychotic claim that lack of classical music is bolstering right wing extremism seems to contradict the – Literal – mountain of evidence of the passionate love for classical music in the third Reich. From Beethoven to Wagner, Classical music was the soundtrack of the holocaust.
Have you forgotten to take your pills today?
The author of this ‘comment’ should quickly seek therapeutic help. Mostly it is available in every country apart from Wokania. Many insurances cover the expenses, so it is worthwhile exploring the possibilities.
Does the Strasbourg orchestra receive EU funding ? The article behind the link mentions a reduction of subsidies by the far-left mayor of Strasbourg.
It’s 325.000€, which is not a lot in the grand scheme of things. I understand the play but if you kick all your toys out of the pram over what should for an organisation of 13m€ be a relatively easily absorbed decrease, you won’t have any weapons in the arsenal for any bigger battles to come…
You’re right. This orchestra (the OPS, one of France’s oldest) is badly administered all round. Its directrice générale does not answer correspondence. Nor does she listen to the DRAC, which represents the Ministère de la Culture but has no teeth because the OPS is an établissement public autonome. This woman’s assistant doesn’t answer mail either. Instead other staff members do, without referencing either the aloof boss or the assistant. The staff learn by example, actually trashing messages from subscribers they don’t want to answer and then claiming that they are missing from the server, which is the city’s own: Strasbourg.eu. Hundreds of empty seats mar the atmosphere in Salle Érasme, even when visitors such as Daniil Trifonov join the excellent orchestra and when there is papering. The marketing, apart from poor subscriber relations, is hampered in the extreme by a pricing structure (cf. price levels) that is simply illogical. The administrator has no interest in this, or in, for exmaple, public transport. So I can say definitely where I would find the €325,000!
I can imagine all that is true…it was the same in Mulhouse until that horrible idiot British guy – who thankfully left.
Forget L-K and Guschlbauer, the rot goes back a long way.
eg.
That ex-leader GANZ guy, started the rot by running after pretty girls and being a general F-up. Orchestra tours ended up being a “baisodrome”.
Bring back Charles Münch (bet you didn’t know he was a Flesch pupil too!).
Well, Charles Münch was never music director in Strasbourg. Do you mean Bour, Rosbaud, or Paray? Klemperer, Pfitzner or Guy Ropartz peut-être?
For those who want to hear Münch as violinist, there are important and surprising documents. A certain Karl Münch was concertmaster of the Gewandhaus Orchestra under Furtwängler and Bruno Walter. And while nothing survives from these two maestros leading the Leipzig orchestra, we have documents of Bach cantatas under Karl Straube with Münch as first violin, with distinguished colleagues. Rudolf Kempe plays the oboe and Günther Ramin the organ.
Münch kept Bach’s music in his permanent repertoire, as anyone who consults the Boston Symphony database can see. Unfortunately he could not record the music, as he was typecast as French music specialist. That he was, but also much more.
Their Uzbek MD is so vibrant that I have never heard of him, and I know the European podium circus pretty well. Sounds like he needs a PR boost and connections pretty sharpish.
He’s excellent.
It’s not often I support these young conductors these days, but this one is excellent. He was 1. Kapellmeister in Düsseldorf before and he conducted better than the GMD there
“to cancel Sunday-morning concerts”
Sunday morning?
Don’t people go to church, or sleep in, or rest, or prepare for the traditional weekly big family lunch? And what of France’s famously protective labor laws forbidding work on Sundays?
Observations in the article, by Philippe Olivier:
“The Strasbourg bourgeoisie, a complex cocktail of Catholics, Jews and Lutherans trained in humanistic disciplines, has lost influence.”
“[Prevailing political voices] preach that demanding culture is the result of fragrances filled with colonialism and glorification of the White Man.”
Ah! They have been woked.
Have you seriously been to France once? Most orchestras play Sunday concerts, often recreative, family-oriented ones, as well as opera houses run Sunday afternoon shows.
Maybe Strassbourg cathedral, an immense building, and immensily beautiful, simply saps the population on sunday mornings.
I expect this is the fault of Brexit. Le pays sans musique…
“But he’s an Uzbeck?” What nationality would you prefer him to be?
Think of the hurdles a musical talent in Uzbekistan, squeezed between Kazachstan, Turkmenistan, Kirgistan and Afghanistan, has to overcome to arrive where Mr Shokhakimov is now. Chapeau!
Name 5 relevant things this orchestra has done in the past 50 years without googling?
Good, now put the money somewhere actually useful for society.
pretty damn stupid comment which means you have never been in Strasbourg.
As I mentioned before, some orchestra has to play for opera du rhin…regularly!
Also not to forget. FR3 had their orchestra before which ended up moved to Luxembourg.
Metz has an opera and large concert hall (arsenal), Nancy has an opera house.
That’s just Alsace Lorraine and even the sadly missed Festival aux chandelles …..
RIP Mme Kuhn!
Before you make a diss on OPS remember lots of players temp, and/or the moselle+rhine valleys+baden Wurt orchestra make up a lot….
Also not to forget the family Pagin live in Strasbourg.
Aimo Pagin is a French pianist, born in 1983.
He trained under Rena Shereshevskaya…
His mother?
Silvia Marcovici
His father the ex leader of SWF radio orchestra.
Thanks for proving my point. Nothing relevant then.
Hope it disappears. Put the money on STEM and hopefully in some generation Europe can create a 1/2 decent startup.
The main tonality of the french article : the new mayor is from the ecologic party. She thinks that classical musical is an old art only for rich and white people. She prefers to spend money in amateur art than in professional art.
Voilà…… she has been woked.
Visited Strasbourg for the first time last year. Pleasant surprise. What a gem of a city. Hope the situation improves for the musicians.
Strasbourg, like so many French cultural institutions employing many staff on permanent contracts, is crippled by the wages and pensions. So many staff, many unsackable, have very little to do. Massively overstaffed with declining funding, declining audiences but ironically millions of Euros for building protects. Bordeaux Opera is so crippled by the wages of the orchestras, opera and ballet artist, staff and technicians it has absolutely no funds to produce or buy in productions. Sadly the writing is on the wall…
Well, they can always produce some very cheap modernist works, or a staged version of Cage’s 4’3″ (with repetitions).