Beethovenfest: Even quiet sounds can spark revolutions

A Beethoven-free zone? To open the Beethovenfest, the Czech Philharmonic presented a unique compilation of sounds from Ligeti and Ullmann, Mozart, Bach and Dvorak. Despite its name, the event kicked off without one piece by the composer.

"I must say I found it very strange that when we discussed the program, no one required us to play anything by Beethoven," conductor Jiri Belohlavek told DW. "I initially thought it would be obligatory to do so. But now that I've read the whole program of the Beethovenfest, I realize that the organizers are keeping Beethoven on the back burner and that their idea this year is to offer many contrasts."

A celebration of quieter sounds

With economical gestures, the 70-year-old Belohlavek, longtime conductor of the orchestra steeped in history, unlocked a down-to-earth, natural and singing sound from the instrumentalists.

The effect became even more powerful during the Violin Concerto No. 5 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as the celebrated US violinist Hilary Hahn let the first notes of her solo unfold. The supreme challenge for any musician is to play Mozart in a way that makes it appear to be easy, and this particular rendition of the work couldn't possibly have sounded more natural and lively. For a moment, the fever-pitched excitement accompanying the event's opening dropped, and a sense of peace settled over the sold-out Beethoven Hall.

Less a call to action than a thought stimulus, the festival will celebrate many quieter sounds that allow revolutions to spark in and with music in the weeks to come. Greeting the audience at the opening concert, Beethovenfest director Nike Wagner announced an "exceptional four weeks with the other reality of art."

"People are feeling that times are changing now and are wondering what will happen in the future. Art provides answers that others can't give. Art stands for dialogue - and we could use more of that," added Christina Kampmann, Culture Minister of North-Rhine-Westphalia in her own welcome speech.

Internal revolutions

The Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, celebrating its 120th anniversary this season, was once conducted by Gustav Mahler and Antonin Dvorak. The orchestra's current musicians - among whom are very few women - demonstrated that they know Dvorak very well, concluding the concert with three of his overtures: "In Nature's Realm," "Othello" and "Carnival." Although the three are rarely performed together, that was actually the composer's original idea. In them, the orchestra could turn up the volume but always avoided sensationalist effects.

That also applied to the rest of the evening's program: The "Concert Romanec," an early work by the Hungarian composer György Ligeti inspired by Romanian folk music, and "Don Quixote Dances the Fandango" by the Austrian composer Viktor Ullmann.

It seems almost inconceivable that a work bursting with so much life could have been composed in a concentration camp. "Our cultural will was adapted to our will to survive," wrote Ullmann in the summer of 1944 in Theresienstadt. In October of that year, he was deported to Auschwitz and murdered.

The music in this work depicts the absurd imaginary journeys of Cervantes' "Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance," who wants to stage his visions in the real world.

That's also what revolutionaries did, reads the program brochure - recalling the fact that revolutions always start in the head.