Tag: broadcast

Daniel Hope, violin, violinist, soloist, performer, artist, host, Hope@Home, classical

Daniel Hope: “I’ve Always Tried To Tell Stories”

Whatever good may have resulted from the unfolding experience of the coronavirus pandemic lockdown, one thing is certain: the gaping holes of arts broadcasting have been wholly, and quite hideously, revealed. Violinist Daniel Hope, together with French-German broadcaster ARTE, smartly stepped up to try and fill the tremendous programming gaps existing across so many spheres of both traditional and digital broadcasting. Taking as its model the European-style salon, Hope@Home has provided a modicum of the concert-going experience while consciously avoiding any attempted replication of pre-COVID (or so-called “normal”) formats.

I initially wrote about Hope’s program at the end of April 2020. Hope@Home began its life earlier that month in the South Africa-born violinist’s living room in Berlin. Equal parts fun, thoughtful, familiar, and surprising, each episode in the series (running roughly 30 to 45 minutes) features a mix of performance and poetry through creative chamber combinations. This is a show that is simultaneously aware of both its old(ish) roots in music and its modern presentation in medium, and it is clear-eyed in its mission to provide an ancillary form of classical experience which simultaneously educates, enlightens, and entertains. Guests have included conductors Sir Simon Rattle and Donald Runnicles, pianists Kirill Gerstein, Tamara Stefanovich, and Sebastian Knauer, opera singers Thomas Hampson, Mattias Goerne, Magdalena Kožená, and Evelina Dobračeva, and actors Ulrich Tukur, Iris Berben, Katharina Thalbach, and Daniel Brühl, many of whom performed in Hope’s own parlor. I could never have imagined in my wildest dreams that such an eclectic bevy of artists would pass through my Berlin salon, nor that we would resurrect the age-old art of the house concert,” Hope wrote in The Guardian in early May. With over sixty episodes now, Hope@Home attracts an international, ever-expanding viewership, and has thus far enjoyed over five million views. Blending old-world charm with a 21st century sensibility is no small thing, and in so doing, Hope has, if I might add a personal note, provided some wonderful moments of comfort and company over many sad months of enforced isolation.

The program has, in parallel with the easing of European lockdown restrictions, moved to a weekends-only format, and out of Hope’s house. Now called Hope@Home On Tour!, various unique and historical locales (indoor and outdoor) across central Europe have become its sets. The July 4th broadcast featured Hope’s very own Zürcher Kammerorchester (Zürich Chamber Orchestra), of which he has been Music Director since 2016, performing in a very evocative factory setting. As well as his duties with Zürich, Hope is also President of the Beethoven-Haus Bonn, Artistic Director of the Frauenkirche Dresden, and Music Director of the New Century Chamber Orchestra in San Francisco. One senses the chamber set-up is where Hope feels most keenly at home in literal and figurative senses; the inherent intimacy of the arrangement provides a route through which the violinist clearly underlines its importance within the creative experience, together with the not-inconsiderable significance of a very human presentation. This is a program that directly addresses any lingering accusations about classical music being distant, heady, or cold; Hope@Home is none of those, and while it does wear its heart firmly on sleeve at times, it does so in elegant and thoughtful ways, immeasurably aided by the creative variety it has offered up over its three-and-a-half-month lifespan. Thus is Zürcher Kammerorchester’s early July appearance at the very tip of an ever-expanding sonic iceberg, pieces of which continue to be unearthed and examined each weekend. The sounds of jazz, swing, and folk are placed beside that of Baroque, classical, and modern, with poetry and theatre hovering close by; never has such a combination felt more right or indeed suited to the nature of the times, as notions of past and present crash and collide to provide an entirely new ways forwards. 

Such variety is reflective of Hope’s own interests and oeuvre. His repertoire features the work of Schumann, Brahms, Mozart, Bach, Vivaldi, Shostakovich, Schnittke, Mendelsohn, Tippett, Hindemith, Berg, Foulds, Poulenc, Messiaen, Bartok, Ravel, and Ravi Shankar (to name a few), and he has performed at many celebrated venues including Carnegie Hall, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Wigmore Hall, Alte Oper Frankfurt, and the Concertgebouw. Creative collaborators and partners have included Menahem Pressler, Anne Sofie von Otter, Sebastian Knauer, and Maxim Shostakovich, conductors Kurt Masur, Christian Thielemann, Ivan Fischer, Kent Nagano, Sir Andrew Davis, Sakari Oramo, Sir Roger Norrington, Thomas Hengelbrock, Jiří Bělohlávek , and organizations The Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Konzerthaus Kammerorchester, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Beaux Arts Trio (of which he was a member from 2002 to 2008), Camerata Salzburg, and his very own Zürcher Kammerorchester. He recorded his latest, wide-ranging album, Belle Époque (Deutsche Grammophon, 2020), with the latter, and it reveals a fascinatingly wide selection of early 20th century sounds, all of which drive a certain narrative around navigating an immense precipice of change as much musical as social. The album skillfully blends the work of Schönberg, Massenet, Zemlinsky, Rachmaninoff, Strauss, Fauré, and renowned violinist and composer Fritz Kreisler, whose work Hope has frequently presented throughout Hope@Home, into a gripping and very evocative 150-minute listen. 

Along with Kreisler, another violinist  to whom Hope regularly pays tribute is Yehudi Menuhin (1916-1999). The New York-born soloist had formidable influence throughout Hope’s childhood, an accidental if highly fortunate connection thanks to his mother, who was Menuhin’s secretary for over two decades. Hope stated in an article for The Strad in 2016 (the centenary of Menuhin’s birth) that “Menuhin was the reason I became a violinist” and shared details relating to the spontaneous nature of their performance-instruction connection; it’s this precise quality, this flying-by-the-seat-of-your-pants see-if-it-sticks spirit of adventure which gave early Hope@Home episodes such unique electricity, but which, alternately, made Hope himself a calm eye in the middle of a veritable storm, a steady presence who just as easily (even now) shares stories of his days with Menuhin (and others) as he does move between works by Miklós Rózsa and Manuel de Falla, beloved tunes like “Amazing Grace”, and riffing on the folk-balladry of Berlin-based Kiwi singer Teresa Bergmann, the timbres of Hope’s violin and Bergmann’s voice twisting and turning in beautiful, hypnotizing spirals of green-gold aural splendor. Throughout its short life, Hope has also championed the works of less mainstream composers, among them Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998) and Erwin Schulhoff (1894-1942). Partly pointing up the show’s blend of education and entertainment, such emphasis also reflects Hope’s discography, as well as his family history, one intimately connected with Berlin and his Jewish roots, a past he openly shares as part and parcel of his hosting duties. There is also, vitally, humour; in one episode from late April, Hope recalled knocking on Alfred Schnittke’s door and introducing himself as a keen teenager; therein developed a friendship which lasted until Schnittke’s passing in the late 1990s.

Such combinations, of personal and broad, intimate and epic, casual boldness and the yearning for inclusion, found direct contemporary expression in Hope’s decision to include homemade musical contributions  by musician-viewers in early episodes of Hope@Home. Such easy integrations equally aid in the salon ambiance of live readings, initially done in an adjoining room in Hope’s house and sometimes set to live music. Robert Wilson (whose appearance on the program was, as you’ll read, a nifty bit of luck) read his own poem about the lockdown experience set to a performance of Pärt’s “Spiegel im Spiegel”; director and Komische Oper Berlin Intendant Barrie Kosky read a passage (unaccompanied) from Joseph Roth’s The Hotel Years. Before embarking on wide-ranging locales, Hope kept his touring sites in Berlin, from whence occasional broadcasts still unfold.  A visit in early June to the former residence of Hope’s grandmother (where she and her family lived until 1935) featured a 1920s-style swing presentation and was enjoyed by the small crowd who had gathered in the leafy Berlin suburb. More grand if no less intimate was a more recent broadcast from at the Strauss-Villa in Garmisch-Partenkirchen featuring baritone Thomas Hampson, who noted of the experience singing in Strauss’s home that “it’s an incredible honor… and I’m terrified.” 

 

Despite its immense popularity, the focus remains on the original intimacy. The show’s visual style is kept purposely consistent, and Hope’s conversational performance style translates seamlessly into his sincere, unaffected deliver. Such naturalism could be owing to past broadcasting projects (including a radio show), but it’s also innately connected with his actively communicative musicality. During a concert with the Konzerthausorchester Berlin honoring Yehudi Menuhin in 2016, Hope and conductor Iván Fischer share a seamless, intense exchange throughout an electrifying performance of Elgar’s Concerto for violin and orchestra in A Minor, Op. 61. Hope’s artistry is one innately connected to communication with his musical partners, whether they’re a pianist, speaker, swing band, or chamber orchestra; this need for communication, and its inherent sincerity, translates palpably to Hope@Home, no small thing in an era that has come to rely more and more on digital broadcast. Hope and I had the opportunity to speak recently, just after he had completed two long-awaited post-lockdown concerts with Zürcher Kammerorchester.

Daniel Hope, violin, violinist, soloist, performer, artist, host, Hope@Home, classical

Photo © Nicolas Zonvi

How did Hope@Home happen?

I had a conversation with Wolfgang Bergmann who is the German head of ARTE. (Bergmann’s official title is Managing Director, ARTE Deutschland and ARTE Coordinator of the ZDF.) I’ve known him for many years and we’ve been in touch regularly with various ideas, and  we had a meeting at the beginning of March in Berlin about something else, just as things were starting to move very fast in terms of the lockdown. Once the meeting was over he said, “What will you do if a lockdown happens, if it gets serious?” I said, “I don’t know, I might turn my living room into a TV studio!” – I said it, just like that – and after about two weeks he called me up and said, “Were you serious about what you said?” I said, “I’m not sure, I might’ve been!” He said, “Let’s do it.”

And so my first question to him was: what about the sound? I’d been watching some of the (music) streams and thought, as great as they were at the beginning, they were missing really good sound quality on classical music. And he said, “How do you want to play it?” I said, “Let me speak to someone who knows about production of classical sound and we’ll see if it’s doable.” I got an engineer  to come and check out if we could do it, then called Wolfgang back to let him know it was possible, but I didn’t expect him to say, “Can we start tomorrow?” That was really insane! And we threw everything together and went straight in. There was no prep, no script, no person checking – usually with these things you have a team of people writing up ideas and vetting artists and repertoire. There was nobody; there was just me. In that sense I did initiate everything, but of course with the help and the slightly mad suggestion of Mr. Bergman.

How much did that spirit of spontaneity directly influence your selections in terms of guests and repertoire? 

I think partly, that very intense time was the reason behind what happened, but there were also some really wonderfully strange coincidences. I was walking with my kids around the block and bumped into Robert Wilson on the street, and was like, “What are you doing here?!” He said, “I’m in lockdown and I can’t get back to the States… and by the way, I’ve been watching your show; can I come on it?” It was just amazing! I suggested he do a reading of something, and racked my brains for things to send him. He showed up at the house an hour before the show with his own script. With Simon Rattle, I’d never met him before but got his number and texted him, and within half an hour he rang back and said, “Pick a day.” Those kinds of things would never ever have happened had there not been this severe lockdown. I would’ve never been able to reach these people and they wouldn’t have spontaneously said, “Let’s do this” – that (availability) was the key behind everything else.

And the freedom from the channel was incredible. They never said, “You can’t put a Simon and Garfunkel song next to a reading of Stefan Zweig and then play Schnittke – that’s just not possible!” I think in my mad attempt to get a show together that made sense, I thought about what kind of music I would like to hear, and then went about to see if I could draw a theme together.

The ease of movement between genres and media is refreshing; you’ve shown, however accidentally, that there is a big thirst for this kind of variety in a cultural presentation.

For a long time I read and researched a lot about the Berlin salons of the 19th century, or the French ones that hosted people like Marcel Proust, this idea, even going back to Schubert’s time, where he’d have these soirees and friends would come by and did something, anything –if they read, played, recited, danced, whatever – it was a getting-together of artistic minds and seeing what happens; that was in the back of my mind. I was sure after a couple of episodes we’d get complaints about something or the other, but because of the shutdown the structures usually in place in terms of regulating TV content were not there, so they let me run with it. One of the biggest victories was doing the whole thing in English, because it’s a German-French channel, so it would’ve normally been in German or French or both; I literally broke with all protocol and went in English, and after the first slightly irate comments from some people at the chanel, they figured out, “Oh wait, everybody speaks English…” And we went with it, because I feel most comfortable speaking English anyway. That was a big part of the success of (Hope@Home): it’s global. People can respond to it.

Noteworthy you spoke in German during your first performances with an audience at the Frauenkirche Dresden.

When we started to go outside of the house and into concert halls and started to have audiences, that was when the next big challenge came; I had an audience in front of me and the audience at home, and I think we were all a little bit anxious to see if it could work somehow, because either the people at home will feel out, or the people in the hall will feel left out, so I was juggling between them. That show in Dresden was the largest audience we’ve had to date (for Hope@Home), it was three or four hundred people, so it was important to address them in German as if it was a concert, but at the same time not to forget about the global audience at home. 

What was that like to play for a live audience after so long – was it emotional?

It was very emotional, yes. Just a couple of nights ago we played in Zürich as well, two concerts with around 450 people, approximately. It’s an extraordinary feeling, having been cut off for months, and to go to back into the hall; even if people aren’t seated next to each other and there are distances, it’s still a very different feeling when you’re communicating directly in that moment and you see and hear applause, you’re watching peoples’ faces, and you’re making music together with colleagues. Playing that chamber music repertoire was unbelievably emotional for all of us.

The experience of hearing applause from a live audience in Dresden hit me quite hard…

I bet!

… though it’s been heartening to note your being such a public champion of the work of Alfred Schnittke. I love that your program features stories like, ‘One night I just knocked on Schnittke’s door’ followed by performances of his works. You blend the personal with the so-called “high-art” of classical in a very engaging way.

Thank you for picking up on all of that. Schnittke is a huge, huge influence on me and I’ve always adored his music. After an absence of a few years I’ve really gotten back into him again. I try to tell stories; I’ve always tried to tell stories. The music is the most important story in all of that, but it’s not the only story. By connecting the dots and trying to at least illuminate the history of the pieces or the people behind them, or the dedicatees, or the messages, I think it enhances the experience. It certainly enhances my enjoyment of the music!

So it’s a gut decision really, of how much information do I want to spell out, without wishing to preach and without wishing to be sanctimonious, but trying to do a little more than, “And now I’ll play the Second Sonata in E-flat Major” – I think there’s more to it. If one knows the story of Erwin Schulhoff, for instance, I think you experience it differently; his Foxtrott, if you know this was written under a pseudonym, by a man who was close to deportation, and was forced to give up one of the greatest careers of his time – you listen differently. And listening differently, and intently, and deeper – that’s really about what we do. And that’s one of the many things I learned from Menahem Pressler in the Beaux Arts Trio, it was, dig as deep as you possibly can into the material; that musical digging is the most important, but the forensic, for me personally, is almost as interesting.

Contextualizing is so important to appreciate any sort of music, but it’s so often watered down, or presently poorly, or left off entirely.

In doing Hope@Home it was my great hope was we were not just going for classical music aficionados but would try to reach people who were locked down and who were maybe looking for culture. To get somebody to listen to an Alfred Schnittke piece who knows nothing about classical music is a challenge, and I think by telling stories and showing why we’re doing this, I wasn’t just going through a bunch of pieces or composers from A to Z, but there was a reason behind it all. A guest would come in and say, “I want this piece” or “I’ll read this text” or try to find something suited. For Rudyard Kipling’s “If” (read by actor Iris Berben), we put Manuel De Falla’s Andalusian folk songs underneath; for a Stefan Zweig reading (performed by Katja Riemann), we did Marietta’s Lied from Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt. I tried to find connections that would enhance the experience and make it accessible without wishing to, in any shape or form, take something away from the music, knowing at the end of the day we only had thirty or forty minutes to present this experience which I was hoping would reach and touch people.

I grew up with the work of Menuhin, and that was his great gift, to contextualize these large histories in very approachable, highly enlightening ways. 

Absolutely. I don’t know if you know the book he wrote, The Music Of Man

My mother had it in her library.

Yes! It was a CBC production back in the late 1970s in which he looked at the influence of music over 500 years, which went from the Renaissance to Oscar Peterson and the people who inspired him. That kind of musical time travel is something I’ve always loved, and  certainly, Menuhin’s eagerness to share that history was a great inspiration to me. I was lucky to grow up very, very close to him and to the collaborations in which he was involved. Even as a very small child, listening to him play with Ravi Shankar and Alla Rakha, the sound of those tablas and the spectacle of that giant virtuoso playing, stayed with me – but the same I can say of Carl Sagan, with whom Menuhin met in order to do this book The Music Of Man; Sagan was the man who told me about the music of the spheres when I was a kid, and that led, thirty years later, to a Spheres album (Deutsche Grammophon, 2013). So there are seeds that somehow get planted and often I come back to them, and at other times there are things, triggers – I’ll hear a radio program or an artist, or read a bit of text or a book which will start me thinking, or get me on a different journey, and sometimes those journeys can last for years before they become a project, and sometimes they happen really fast. 

The interesting thing with this show is that I was thrown together with many different with artists, some of whom I’d admired for a long time but never met, and it gave me new impulses. I’d discover new pieces – I’d be feverishly looking overnight for a piece to play on the program the next day, and if it didn’t have the arrangement I needed, then I’d be getting somebody to arrange it in time. That was a creativity in overdrive, I would say.

So how has this overdrive changed you creatively then? You don’t seem to be the same artist you were back in March.

It’s a great question. I definitely feel a big change, I have to say. Those six weeks at home were some of the most intense and creative – I was literally on fire the whole time. Going from show to show, and sometimes we didn’t even know if the person was going to come, and if they did what they would do – it was fraught in that sense, but also very positive. And so I think the biggest challenge was going back to the schedule, or what’s left of it, let’s say, and trying to think, ‘Okay, there’s an inquiry to play a Mozart Concerto in four years’ time on this day; is this something you want to do?’ And I did find myself asking myself… I’m not sure if I want to do that. Because one of the greatest things about this show was and is that I’m calling up people and saying, “Can you come in two  days and play?” and because they’re free they can do this – and that’s how classical music worked for centuries. If you look at the great artists at the beginning of the 20th century, the Horowitzs or Rubinsteins or even Menuhins, they’d arrive in  a town, a concert would be scheduled, they’d play and wait to see the reaction, then if people liked it, they’d have another, or say, “Let’s do it again next week” – that happened with Thomas Hampson recently. I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we got him to do something?’ and I rang him up and said, “Can you come in two days’ time?” I think everything being planned three years in advance…  as classical musicians we may have to lose that structure, and even security, if we’re going to survive.

The other thing is, this constant traveling, this constant being on-the-road, I think, again, there’s been a sort of reexamination of that. The fact one can actually stay at home and produce high-quality music and share it with a worldwide audience was quite a revelation to me, I have to say.

Daniel Hope, violin, violinist, soloist, performer, artist, host, Hope@Home, classical

Photo ©Harald_Hoffmann

And you understood the importance of sound quality, and the value of an event in and of itself.

At the very beginning I loved the online stuff because I felt there was this giant worldwide hug – all musicians were trying to hug each other. I thought it was very uplifting. But very soon I found myself saying, ‘Well, this sounded good but this didn’t’ – and then it bothered me. Also (online streaming) became so spontaneous and so … kind of last-minute, and it lost some of the special factor of going to a concert – even just putting on a suit, you go and actually make an occasion of it. As you know we were all at home, all unable to cut our hair and able to wear what we wanted to wear – we were all forced to readjust, but for the program, I made a conscious decision. Tobias Lehmann said, “I can make the sound I know you want” and I said to Christoph (Israel), “Listen, we’re going to play concerts now; we’re not going to stream and sit there and take requests. We are making an occasion of this, and we are going to dress up because it is a concert, and we’ll see what happens.” I don’t regret that. It gave a kind of an element of escapism, which is what people were looking for, but at the same time the respect to the art form we’ve been practicing all our lives.

That’s why it was nice to see people dressed up, and it still is. And you are very natural as a host as well, there’s none of the “Daniel-is-in-his-hosting-suit-with-his-hosting-voice” routine.

I appreciate that. A lot of it was learning by doing and seeing how it would work, and trying things out, but trying to be myself, trying to be authentic. We were lucky to have the sound of Tobias, and the guests we’ve had, and lucky to have the guys on the cameras who created that look and to take the look with us when we go on the road – we take the lamps, we take the paintings. We try to give people that sense of, ‘Here we are again!’

How long will it continue?

At the moment we are pretty much sure we’re going on until the middle of August, but we’re not sure after that. At some point I will need to take a holiday, a break! It’s hard to imagine ARTE would keep this going forever, but the response has been so strong and we’re over 5 million streams. So, given the very precarious state of the world right now, as I always say, if we’re allowed to keep going, we will keep going; circumstances may change, and everybody’s talking about a second wave. Whether it will come or not, it’s in the stars right now, but if I had one wish, it would be to come to North America and do the show from there…  but if it’ll happen, we just don’t know right now. I hope we will be allowed to come in at some point.

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Berlin, classical, auditorium, performance, music, culture, stage, orchestra, performance

Essay: Exposure, Energy, Exchange, & Freebie Culture

Every morning amidst sips of strong coffee and self-exhortations related to baking (because a piece of good white bread, toasted, is suddenly so much work), I examine a raft of newly-arrived emails, skimming this one and that to distinguish the urgent from the not. Some of the messages contain links to videos, some feature video and audio material embedded within; some link to longer features at a formal website, some hold lengthy features within the boxy confines of the message itself, ribbons of rich text snaking down like bits of untidy morning hair scattered around shoulders, glinting in the morning sun. Some contain good news; most don’t. Another sip or two of coffee, a sigh, a look out the window, past the brick wall of a tiny garden to tree tops poking proudly up in the distance; the sight is a vital reminder to try and see a better, broader picture amidst the far more limiting and depressing immediate one. At certain times perspective is indeed the most vital thing – but sometimes it’s just as true that a bad view is simply a bad view, a bad location is a bad location, and that certain changes are quietly if firmly asking to be set in motion.

A favored activity of late is watching panels featuring  figures who are speaking outside of their immediate and respective comfort zones. One recent such event featured violinist Nicola Benedetti hosting classicist Mary Beard, mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill, and psychiatrist Raj Persaud; it was refreshing to experience such varied points of view about music and its effects; hearing Beard discuss Plato and his notions of music was a wonderfully bright bit of non-musicologist counterpoint. Another recent conversation featured conductor Alan Gilbert chatting with fellow maestro Herbert Blomstedt, a figure one might assume is not wholly used to speaking about music on Zoom. His jovial (and sometimes lengthy) hums of portions of Beethoven’s Third Symphony inspired, at the time of their delivery, a grab at the score off the shelf, and a mental note to devote energy to further examination – but oh, the humming was charming, a warm expression of humanity behind brilliance. I am presently looking forward to listening to Opera Holland Park’s Director of Opera, James Clutton, exchange views and insights with Komische Oper Berlin Intendant Barrie Kosky. Such offerings, together with concerts broadcast on various international radio channels, have been effective at not only filling in various knowledge gaps, but in allowing a needed experience of community amidst the continued quarantine isolation resulting from the coronavirus pandemic, and there’s a great worth in to such activities, one which needs to be recognized, for the pseudo-normalcy such material provides is at once comforting and enlivening, even as concerts in certain locales, under strict conditions, continue to resume. The sound of applause in Berlin’s Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche following Daniel Hope’s recent broadcast from the historical locale was gut-wrenching to hear through computer speakers, a happy if equally awful reminder of separation, communion, presence and absence, of a circle slowly being closed but revealing a yawning hole at its core, one that asks a nagging question: who’s being paid?

It’s a question being asked with more persistence as horrific economic realities settle in. Recently I took part in a Zoom conference which connected neurological reaction with online classical presentation, organized by the University of Oxford in collaboration with HEC Montréal (the graduate business school of the Université de Montréal). Numerous participants eagerly discuss their unique experiences (virtual and not) before discussion invariably turned to money: funding models, proper remuneration, the psychology inherent within the act of paying. One user subsequently commented that “I’ve found that I can really find any (event) online and for free, pre-recorded. However, I am much more likely to fully participate if I’ve had to pay a fee and strangely feel as if it’s of higher quality (untrue!). So that investment and ‘live’ element are crucial to me as a value indicator.” Observing the tide of rising doubt around online freebie culture has been interesting if somewhat painful, because it underlines the ugly and (for so long) taken-for-granted reality that writers, especially those with an arts beat, have faced for so long. My mother used to excoriate me for taking free work, when, still in my toddler-scribe stage, I would busily contribute to numerous large (and occasionally well-known) sites. “You’re giving away your talent,” she would say with exasperation, “to people who could well afford to pay you something. Just because they don’t know how to do business, you shouldn’t be the one helping them for nothing.” I would outwardly agree but feel inwardly trapped; was I really getting nothing? The choice between providing free work (which I wanted to believe opened a myriad of professional doors) or struggling in relative obscurity seems like a false one… and yet. The glittering of the promise of the internet, for a budding writer, depends so much on how willing one is to wade through a deep, dank swamp, for a very long time.

sculpture, fountain, satyr, spout, face, expression, carving, intensity

Water Spout Depicting Pan Or a Satyr, 2nd-3rd century AD, limestone; Altes Museum Berlin. Photo: mine. Please do not reproduce without express written permission.

That swamp became so deep through the immense devaluing of professional arts writing decades ago via the rise of digital and the related media/ad-tech/management decisions accompanying that ascent, decisions which still resonate and seem frustratingly entrenched within the media industry. As a writer, it’s terrible to feel consistently undervalued; it’s equally disheartening to continually donate your talent to large, faceless organizations without any form of reciprocal remuneration or recognition. I suspect, this is one reason why there are so many independent arts blogs in existence: people want an avenue for their passions, a place to share and sharpen and connect. The blogging world’s role and wider value within the classical ecosystem is a post for another day, but suffice to state here it is a world which bears contemplation, nay scrutiny, in direct relation to the concerns artists now express around the fairness (or not) of freebie culture. Awareness of individual value means retaining some measure of control over public offerings, which therefore necessitates the wilful exercise of choice in the implementation of remunerative properties. According to Buddhist belief, money is a form of energy, and as artists, it seems more important than ever to, as a 1996 article in Tricycle notes, “learn to ride this powerful energy, instead of being ridden by it.” I started this website in 2017 as a labour of love; its material, produced solely by yours truly, remains free for readers because it feels right to do so, as befits certain perceptions of me as an ambassador for music and the classical arts, which I am truly flattered by, but also take seriously. (Hopefully I don’t sound unbearably pretentious stating this.) I would far prefer to keep the unique value of that independence, in its myriad of forms, to myself, and carry my wonderfully faithful readership in that spirit, than give any bit of it (and me, and them) away.

carving, Thoth, baboon, scribe, god, work, writing, writers, discipline, sculpture, Egyptian

The scribe Tjaj in front of the god Thoth, patron of scribes, in the shape of a baboon, Egyptian, 1388-1351 BC, wood & serpentinite; Neues Museum Berlin. Photo: mine. Please do not reproduce without express written permission.

That means any residual anger at the boss is worked out in front of a mirror, and whatever exposure (that infamous word) I gain is that which I am able to fully control, measure, and reinvest in and around pursuits and goals related firmly to gaining a broader perspective, for me, for the artists who interest and inspire, and for readers. I realize this isn’t sexy to advertisers, much less large swathes of music lovers, very much less the intelligentsia-musicology crowd I confess to sometimes feeling I need validation from. (Newsflash: writers are insecure.) But if there is to be any momentum in the classical ecosystem now, it behoves all of us, at all levels, to start thinking more carefully about ideas around exposure, exchange, and innovation. The notion of “giving” exposure to artists who produce cultural material for wide consumption across digital platforms in lieu of payment, by large (or even not-so-large) organizations needs to be more broadly and boldly questioned, for it calls into consideration the whole idea of how we, individually and collectively, think of culture and its role in our lives. A powerful recent editorial in The Guardian and today’s dire (if not unexpected) announcement from The Met force issues of cultural value to the fore. Should we care about culture in a time of pandemic and suffering and social unrest? How much? Is culture (and its related written coverage) perceived as a leisure pursuit? An escapist activity? A pleasant diversion from Real Life? Should artists be giving songs, shows, concerts, ballets, paintings, plays, and poetry (writing) out of the sheer goodness of their hearts?

Amidst the sudden closures and cancellations that took place in March there was an intense whirlwind of sudden online activity and free offerings from classical artists, a panicked logic that shrieked the understandably obvious. Large outlets with paid models (The Met, the Berlin Philharmonic’s Digital Concert Hall, Wiener Staatsoper, Bayerische Staatsoper) were suddenly giving work away, standing, rather bizarrely, toe-to-toe with choirs and freelance musicians who were willingly performing from balconies, living rooms, bedrooms, and kitchen tables, suddenly grappling with cameras, microphones, angles, lighting, and the interminable joys of uploading, trying to balance self-promotion with communal experience and needed connection while ensuring their presence in a piece of unprecedented history. There was a wonderful and refreshing underlining of personality in some quarters. Lisette Oropesa’s warm exchanges, and the vivacious work done by Chen Reiss (for online interview series Check The Gate), for instance, revealed them both to be the plain-speaking, earthy sopranos I conversed with in respective past chats. I suspect many classical artists enjoyed (or are still enjoying) the experience of a quite literally captive audience, a heady and unusual mix of accidental and intentional, and why not? In those early quarantine days, keeping access free was not only a nice gesture but vital for business.

Wigmore, auditorium, hall, performance, culture, music, London, intimate, venue

Wigmore Hall. Photo: mine. Please do not reproduce without express written permission.

Nevertheless, with the current resumption of concerts in some places and continued quarantine in others, the virtual is becoming tied to the real, the fantasy of a past normalcy tied to current financial reality. Desperate times call for stark if/then mathematics: if you want this album, then pay for it. If you want that performance, then pay for it. Artists are realizing it can be difficult if not impossible to put the toothpaste back in the tube once a precedent for free content has been established, with related expectations for its continuance. I strongly suspect certain events are about to have paid models applied to them, in various forms. Zoom conferences, like the HEC one I participated in recently, will, sooner than later, become paid events. Would I pay to watch/listen to a panel featuring Benedetti, Cargill, and Beard, or Maestros Gilbert and Blomstedt, or Clutton/Kosky? Yes. Wigmore Hall has just resumed weekday performances, with broadcasts (online, radio) in collaboration with BBC Radio 3, but one wonders what will happen after the end of June; will there be a paid model? The Berlin Phil’s Digital Concert Hall has returned to its own subscription-based service, while many opera houses are currently offering limited-run broadcasts of past productions. One wonders about all the discussions taking place around offering new models that might allow greater user flexibility and personalization of (especially live) experience. Crow’s Theatre in Toronto recently offered a (delivered) gourmet dinner from a local restaurant with a live presentation of their theatricalized staging of Master And The Margarita, all for a set price; Tafelmusik has paired with a local gelateria for their at-home listening experiences. Conductor Vasily Petrenko, in the most recent edition of his (excellent) Lockdown Talks series, flat-out asks Jonathan Raggett (Managing Director of the Red Carnation Hotels chain) if he thinks a future partnership between orchestras and hotels might be possible in terms of chamber presentations in conference/ballrooms. Everyone is madly examining the possibilities of alternative revenue streams with this, the new normal of cultural presentation and experience, even as we try to absorb what feels, many days, like a never-ending stream of shock and sadness.

Berlin, classical, auditorium, performance, music, culture, stage, orchestra, performance

At the Berlin Philharmonie. Photo: mine. Please do not reproduce without express written permission.

The ugly reality is, after all, that many outlets and individuals are facing bankruptcy. Nimbleness, while lovely as a concept, is not something easily, quickly enacted or adaptable to many lives, and exposure, or even its promise, does not (as so many writers know) pay bills/rent/mortgage, much less provide the stones that could line the pathways leading to such dreamed-of stability – but the promise of exposure is a terribly tempting, a solid-looking thing to hop on (equally so the “tip jar”) that is proving itself to be naught but a rusty anchor with one clear direction. The question remains: what are we willing to pay for? How does spending relate to the (vital, right now) notion of scarcity? What value do we place on the experience of community? It behoves artists to stop being squeamish about openly discussing proper remuneration, just as much as it behoves us to start considering the broader ecosystem that allows this form of energy to fully flow – an ecosystem that surely includes the written word as much as the sung note, as much as the open string, as much as the pressed valve and held tone. Certainly it can be intoxicating at seeing one’s work enjoyed and shared by many, in revelling in attention and praise; digital culture exacerbates this attachment, and indeed it is sometimes an energetic black hole of a swamp one might choose to never leave. But it is vital to know when one is able to walk on stilts, and to trot away proudly, not looking back.

Lately I have experienced tremendous doubts about this website’s continued existence, ones specifically tied to my overall worth as a writer. If I’m not getting paid by a big mainstream outlet, do I have any real worth? How can I possibly compete with intellectual types who have the backing of far larger organizations and fanbases? Do I have anything remotely worthy to contribute through my writing or other creative efforts? Would that feeling be altered were I to receive remuneration, or what might, in Buddhist terms, be called reciprocal energy? Should I cease public writing entirely? I keep looking  up to the treetops, trying to imagine a clearer, better view. Notions of worth, value, and self-doubt are things everyone in the classical world grapples with at the best of times. Perhaps more thinking, more coffee, and a higher pair of stilts are required. Perhaps it’s time to find a better view.

curtain, stage, culture, performance, opera, operetta, Komische Oper Berlin, red, Berlin

Essay: Pondering Community, Technology, & “Normal”

I feel bad about not doing more writing lately. There’s been a terrible, nagging sense of letting people down, although, truth be told, there has also been a realization of my desire for privacy, together with an innate need to sit and steep, regularly – not only literally in the tub most nights, but figuratively, in words, sounds, images, ideas, inspirations, and observations, for days and weeks. It has been no easy thing, as a generally impatient person with a fiery workaholic streak, to will myself to sit quietly, attempting to comprehend and synthesize macro and micro experiences – the strange, the silly, the scintillating – within a truly historic time frame, a whole new era, wholly unexpected, wholly unwelcome, and wholly undeniable in its impact and reach. Why and how might I rush anything, and to what end? For clicks, views, eyeballs and hype? Why should I put my thoughts into the public sphere in relation to the cultural issues of the current times? How can I possibly reconcile the monumentous with the mundane? What can I possibly contribute?

Pianist Igor Levit pondered similar questions in a recent Q&A with German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel in which he asked, “Was ist Kultur nach Corona? Sind wir Entertainment oder sind wir wichtig, im Sinne von: Erfahre ich Relevanz und haben wir Relevantes beizutragen?” (“What is culture after Corona? Are we entertainment or are we important, in the sense of: Do I experience relevance and do we have relevant things to contribute?”) What indeed is culture? Where do I fit in? Does what I and who I am do hold any merit? I haven’t felt qualified to tackle these questions, in writing or otherwise, and, with no desire to put myself in the public eye simply for the sake of it, I have kept purposely, purposefully quiet, tending to what little paid work there is, engaging in predictable domestic responsibilities, and attempting the odd bit of creative endeavor in paint and ink and pastel. In between, I have listened, relistened, watched, painted, cooked, cleaned, ordered, reordered, organized, reorganized, reached out, shut down, kept a routine, broken a routine, smiled, cried, raged, and pondered – and amidst all of this, I have read voraciously: articles, poetry, maps, interviews, comments on social media platforms; in the morning, through the afternoon, into many evenings and over many meals. A computer is not a good brunch or dinner companion, it must be noted.

Recently I poured over various bits of news tearing into the remains of a roast chicken, one delivered by kind neighbours, bought during one of their regular outings. Grocery shopping, like so many activities, feels like something from a distant past, and yet it was only a few short months ago I, like so many, felt it to be the most normal of activities. Being a freelancer meant (means) carefully watching a budget and it was earlier this year that I had noted, with some pride, that I’d been able to bring the cost of my weekly grocery bill down. Seeing the refreshingly low price of that chicken last week, having noted the painful inflation of grocery prices over the past two months, was a strange reminder of those (so-called) normal times, a time when I’d walk into a supermarket as casually as I’d walk into a concert hall. Being immune-compromised has meant not venturing into a supermarket, hardware store, restaurant, or indeed, concert hall, theatre, or opera house since early March. There is an understandable sense of longing for things once taken for granted, and a simultaneous anxiety over what those very things (privileges now, if we are honest) might actually cost in the long run in terms of safety, stability, and, if you’re lost people during this pandemic (as I have), visceral mortality.

Berlin, cathedral, dome, view, perspective, city, Germany, Berliner Dom

The dome of Berlin Cathedral. Photo: mine. Please do not reproduce without permission.

Such concerns loom amidst the recent news that German culture minister Monika Grütters, together with the culture ministers of Germany’s states, have agreed on an idea for resumption of cultural activities at the end of May. This news runs parallel with stringent outlines for those reopenings, plus the recent news that Berlin has recorded its lowest level of COVID-19 patients in eight weeks. Reopenings are bound to happen, but there is a question of how recognizably “normal” they may or may not be. Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden has been the first house in Germany to reopen, with a live presentation series which kicked off this past Monday (18 May) with baritone Günther Groissböck. The series, which includes theatre works along with opera, runs through early June and is happening at both the large and small Wiesbaden stages, with reduced orchestra, or sometimes (as was the case with Groissböck’s concert) solo piano. Upcoming highlights include excerpts from Tristan und Isolde presented twice (21 and 31 May), with tenor Andreas Schager and soprano Catherine Foster, and Schubert’s song cycle Die schöne Müllerin, performed by tenor Klaus Florian Vogt next week (29 May). An audience of 200 are permitted for the performances in the large house (instead of the usual 1,000) and masks are required for all attendees, with no bar service and only one person at a time allowed to use bathroom facilities. One expects other organizations will shortly follow suit in adherence with the same guidelines, finding further ways to facilitate live performance.

Only some of this matches what once constituted “normal” in the classical world, of course, and it will be interesting to note, over the coming months, how various houses and orchestras will be adjusting programming and presentations accordingly. “Normal” is has become an experience which is entirely changeable, linked to an unpredictability attached to both the new nature of the virus and the old station of human behaviour. Therein, of course, lies its terror. One music writer recently examined the connections between music and context using performances of Beethoven’s Ninth as a potent example and asking “(w)hat matters more in a performance: the art or the context?” The era of corona has joined the two in ways no one could have ever anticipated at the start of 2020, and yet the entire classical world is bound to that fusion (and the energy it is creating, and has yet to create) in both professional and personal spheres. For as much as there is true cause for joy in the classical industry at resumption of activity, there is also immense worry. I have stopped asking when I might next attend a live event and have begun to ask if. Will it be possible? Will I feel safe? Will I be able to afford a ticket? Just as much do I worry over the role independent writers (especially those of us intentionally off the media path) might play; do we have a place, particularly in a landscape that is rapidly relying on digital transmission and engagement? I want to believe there’s possibilities within the ever-changing classical ecosystem, but I also wonder if corona (and its repercussions) has reinforced the very walls that ask (need) to be torn down. There is a human tendency toward finding comfort in the familiar, one which calcifies into intransigence, and it affects artists as much as audiences, resulting in a creativity that is controlled, controllable, and despite all the big talk of embracing exploration, as comfy-normal as ever. Will that continue?

Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin, dome, architecture, Germany

Looking up at the Alte Nationalgalerie Berlin. Photo: mine. Please do not reproduce without permission.

Such notions are useful reminders of just how intertwined art and context really are. The classical culture table seems to be expanding and contracting simultaneously, and one holds out a tiny sliver of hope for creative, intelligent integration between various artistic disciplines, one that moves beyond replication and talking heads (enjoyable as a very select few of them are). Such replication, particularly within the realm of the spate of Instagram Live videos on offer at any moment, brings to mind Susan Sontag’s notion that “needing to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced by photographs is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted.” Those who enjoy online streams and broadcasts (notably The Met’s Live In HD series) were motivated, during pre-corona times, by a number of factors, among them health, economics, proximity, curiosity, simple company. (I know; I was sometimes among them.) Some may tune in in order to watch a favorite performer, others to have their views about a specific work (or indeed, an entire art form) affirmed and validated (or not, if frequent use of the word “Eurotrash” in comment threads is reliable evidence of such non-affirmations). Lately I suspect the desire (or “addiction” to use Sontag’s not-wrong phrase) to watch is linked to the desire to partake in a ritualized form of socio-musical nostalgia. The “remember when”ism of the live experience, always an extant factor within digital culture, has been magnified one-thousand fold over the past two months. It feels normal to watch these things; we, as an audience feel normal – even though “normal” is entirely, at this point in history and within the context of corona, a construct, a memory, another bit of nostalgia. 

What is on offer now by various arts organizations might be intended as a temporary replacement, but of course nothing can (or will, or does) replace a live experience in the theatre, nor should it. There has been a lot (a lot) of hand-wringing online, across various platforms, about the live-vs-digital experience; this seems like a false narrative of competition, and a reductive way of framing culture. (I will be writing about this and the culture of “free” that goes with it in greater detail soon, I promise.) Digital is not a replacement for live, it is merely, if right now, vitally, a complement. The live, lived experience, of being (truly being) in an auditorium with hundreds or sometimes thousands of other living beings, collectively intaking breath at certain moments, expressing surprise or shock or grief or relief at others, the resonance of voice and sound and applause moving through layers of velvet, wool, silk, cashmere, flesh, bone, nail, eyelash; the light of eyes, the cock of necks, the bow of heads, the ripple of fingertips; the sheer magic of being in a room with others, listening to and watching and experiencing everything in a sensual symphony of sound, movement, light, and shadow — this is singular, special, worth protecting, supporting, meditating on, and dreaming about. I am, however, unsure such an experience conforms tidily into a preset idea of “normal”, nor has it ever; it is extra-ordinary. The times I’ve had to miss performances out of consideration for my own delicate health are memories stained with an aching tone of regret. Independent freelance life (and the sacrifice inherent within it), a frustratingly sensitive constitution, plus an overall quotidian solitude add up to a weight given to live events which is rarely if ever afforded to other experiences. In addition to the sensuous, they offer a rare (for me) sense of living community within a highly confined and intensely concentrated space and time. The sharpness of experiential contrasts – from no people to lots of people, from empty spaces to filled spaces, from silence that is chosen (mostly) to silence ritualized, timed, imposed, manoeuvred – is, or was, my own form of normal. (Certain parts of this have stayed blessedly intact; I have written most of this in a lovely silence punctuated by the odd drips of a humidifier, the self-propelled squeaks of an antique maple chair, and the regular rumbles of a tea kettle. One might safely add the maraca-like clatter of ice-cubes in a cocktail jigger after this is posted.) Dipping in and out of communal experiences is its own sort of privilege, and it can be difficult to navigate the visceral tidal waves that come with those arrivals and departures, but the grey, windless days are worse and I’ve found certain online broadcasts to be colorful buoys to latch onto amidst the seemingly-endless grey days of late.

music, performance, classical, venue, architecture, design, lights, Berlin, Philharmonie

Looking up at the Berlin Philharmonie. Photo: mine. Please do not reproduce without permission.

Tuning into an online event means not coming with any of the same ideas or expectations of ecstasy (not that I attend live events with such expectations either), but in full awareness of the value of community, however virtual it may (must) be right now. There’s something satisfying about watching the numbers on the side of a live chat; never has pressing the “Like” button and watching it sail across the screen been more connected to some form, however tangential, of validating social cohesion. Nothing about it is normal, and yet… isn’t it? What is normal anymore Live events, whether conversations or concerts, offer the necessary frisson of excitement missing from the lives of those used to attending live events, and the contrasts they provide which form, for some of us, some vision of normalcy; sometimes they even offer rewarding illumination and revelatory insights. Professor Marina Frolova-Walker’s excellent series of lectures on the Ballet Russes (via Gresham College) underlines fascinating connections between dance, design, and music at a very creatively fertile time in history (maybe that should be “histories”), while conductor Alan Gilbert’s weekly exchanges with fellow conductors (his last one featured Sir Antonio Pappano, Marin Alsop, and Esa-Pekka Salonen) have revealed inspiring ideas on not only the current circumstances but experiences, observations, and confessions in relation to specific scores and composers. As Alsop noted last Friday, the exchange probably wouldn’t happen under normal circumstances, and certainly not in public. Violinist Daniel Hope has found success by placing intimate live performance firmly within a digital idiom; he has recently re-started his Hope@Home series with broadcaster Arte, performing from various German venues, including, this past Sunday, from the incredible heights of the Berliner Fernsehturm, with music by The Kinks and an appearance by actress Sophie Rois. What is normal (“normal”) now?

art, sketch, mixed media, color pastels, abstract, original

Original sketch. Art & photo: mine. Please do not reproduce without permission.

Despite or perhaps because of the immense supply of digital material, uncertainty has become its own form of community, one filled with billions of sighs, billions of gasps, billions of yawns, all peering at the glow of large or tiny screens, together and apart. Everyone, amidst the bells of instant messages or the yawning quiet without them, exhales heavily and wonders what life will look like a month, a year, a decade from now. I wonder at the premiere live event that I’ll be attending in a post-lockdown world, and again, not when but if… and if so, will I wear a mask (yes) and will I mind (no) and how far others may have travelled to be in the same spot, what sacrifices they may have made and what risks they may be taking in making the effort for something they love. What will the artists be thinking and feeling, I wonder, performing for what may well be a select audience, and what sense of community might they might grasp? How might that experience of community complement or contrast with mine?  Will it compare at all to past events? Should it? Will I feel relief, calm, ecstasy, sadness, guilt, joy, beauty, confusion, a sense of overwhelm… perhaps all or perhaps none? Will it matter? More than anything: I want to leave a blank inner canvas for undefinable things that have yet to be understood. Call it whatever you want; it won’t – can’t  – be normal. Not anymore.

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