Unlike writers, theater makers or pop stars, musicians have a problem if they want to express themselves politically on stage: a statement against right-wing extremism before Mozart's Requiem? Or an appeal for world peace between the movements of the Hammerklavier Sonata? Would be difficult.
Musicians from the Hamburg-based NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra have come up with their own solution to this problem: on Saturday, the ensemble gave a free concert with Antonio Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons", which did very little with the piece The new "mission" of the orchestra (Gilbert) had a lot to do. Instead of the original ("Four Seasons") was a modified version ("For Seasons") listed, which should remind of the climate crisis and the audience should shake accordingly. "We've heard all about climate change," was the slogan on a banner in the Elbphilharmonie, "now it's time to listen".
A piece that depicts all weather phenomena
Hardly any other work of concertante music is as well suited to such an experiment as Vivaldi's classic hit composed almost 300 years ago. Four short violin concertos - one for each season - depict all kinds of weather phenomena, summer heat, thunder and spring storms, birdsong and even dog barking. The nice thing about it: Even if you do not want to decipher these sounds, the "Four Seasons" sound wonderful anyway. Even stubborn despisers of early 18th-century music ("Baroque pegs") become weak at Vivaldi.
However, the musicians of the Elbphilharmonie Orchestra have taken Vivaldi's program music very seriously. The creative studio "Kling Klang Klong" from Berlin received an order that true classical music fans probably consider the greatest possible sin possible: "Kling Klang Klong" should collect all sorts of data on climate change and convert it into an algorithm with which the piece strongly alienated has been. In concrete terms, since, for example, the European bird population has shrunk by about 15 percent in the last thirty years, 15 percent of all musical scores in Vivaldi's bird motifs have simply been shaved off.
And as the weather phenomena merge more and more in the seasons, Vivaldi's tunes from the four concerts were also jumbled up and down. Spring is already summer. And winter is no longer what it used to be.
"Somehow it sounded very different from Vivaldi"
Since calculations alone do not yield any music, the record was edited again, this time by a live musician, the Hamburg solo soprano Simone Candotto. The result is a piece worth listening to, which at the beginning still reminds of Vivaldi, but in the end more to the music of moderate newbies like Arvo Pärt or Alfred Schnittke. Candotto even plays the brass of the Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, who are only allowed to listen to the baroque original.
The audience in the Elbphilharmonie, however, is unlikely to have understood the many small and large manipulations of the original. "Somehow it sounded very different from Vivaldi," said a 16-year-old when leaving, "but somehow it was great too."
And that could be the dilemma of the whole evening: "For Seasons" does not sound like a crisis. The drama intended to illustrate this piece seems to be even consumable. "I hope you enjoy the music!", Gilbert had wished the audience before the concert. Obviously that was the case: in between there was always applause, in the end even standing ovations.
However, it is uncertain if the work will be performed again. There are still no concrete plans, it may be "For Seasons" as well as most novelties of New Music: they are played a few times and then forgotten. Climate change, however, remains with us. Even before the concert, critics of the whole project had reminded that globally active directing stars like Gilbert could do much more personally against global warming if they were not constantly flying from one concert to the next. Allegedly, however, the maestro now announced that he wants to travel by train more often in the future.
