classics are not in crisis, they describe the crisis” – Kommersant

The Salzburg Festival 2023 ended yesterday. On the eve of the closing quartermaster of the festival Markus Hinterhäuser, summing it up, Alexey Mokrousov about his views on the work of György Ligeti, the crisis of classical music, the beauty of the Russian language, political statements in art and the idea of ​​collective guilt.

— Before asking about the hero of the main concert program of the festival — “Time with Ligeti”, I would like to clarify after the concert with the music of three Hungarian composers at once — Kodály, Bartók and Ligeti: do you already speak a little Hungarian?

— No, and it is unlikely that I will succeed, it is as difficult as with the Finnish language. But since we’re talking about languages ​​- not because I’m giving an interview to a Russian newspaper, but in fairness – the only language that I like so much that I’m really sad that I don’t speak it is Russian. I find it incredibly beautiful, listening to Rachmaninov’s romances is wonderful.

– In one of his articles, Ligeti writes that for the sake of music he will leave his studies to everyone else, but at the same time, few people have as many political statements, the same involvement in modernity as he does. Is he a typical composer of the post-war world in this sense, or rather an exception?

— Ligeti is extremely versatile. There are so many different stages in his amazing legacy, where he is very different from his former self, but at the same time remains himself. Everything possible is there: absurdity, humor, great tragedy, sometimes something actionist is found there, and right there he again shows himself to be an adherent of a strict form. As for politics… In principle, it is interesting and sometimes nice when an artist speaks directly about the world, perhaps not very deeply, but freshly talks about what our life is. But should everyone who considers himself an artist, in principle, have to declare a certain political position? He can do it – and I like such artists for the most part – but he is not at all obliged to do so. Ligeti, largely due to his biography, asked existential questions about life, which were also very political, just like Luigi Nono, like Henze, albeit in a different form, like Martinu. The author of “Greek Passions” did not just discover the novel by Nikos Kazantzakis, he created thanks to it a largely prophetic statement, ultimately relating to political and ethical issues. But you can also live in an ivory tower, Peter Handke wrote about himself like this: I live in an ivory tower.

– It is difficult to find today a more politically minded writer than Handke.

– Of course, in a certain sense, this is coquetry on his part – and yet such a position has the right to be, it is working. Everyone decides for himself, he chooses his own destiny.

— Why was his most political opus, the opera Le Grand Macabre, not shown as part of the Time with Ligeti cycle?

– I will say now, maybe something dangerous, but I do not feel much sympathy for this work, this is not what really interests me. The rest of his music is definitely yes, but I have seen the Grand Macabre more than once and I can definitely say that the opera does not arouse my enthusiasm.

— That is, the ten minutes that Patricia Kopachinskaya and the Camerata Salzburg orchestra devoted to a fragment from Macabre is the maximum that the festival could devote to this opera?

– This is fundamentally different, Kopatchinskaya was interested in Ligeti’s humor, he was part of the program, where both Cage and Mozart sounded; the “Grand Macabre” bits are a worthy climax, I find them very beautiful.

– The place of the radical political opera, which was at one time for the festival “Intolerance” by Luigi Nono, this year was taken by “Greek passions” by Martinu?

— I think differently. Yes, I am engaged in music of the 20th and 21st centuries and will continue to do so, but the choice of an opera for staging is not related to the date of its creation. Look what Verdi’s Macbeth tells us about power, its fury and cruelty…

– … and about dependence on power?

— Absolute dependence! That is why it is important to stage Macbeth today. And Martin’s opera is also extremely important right now. The Greek Passions are impressive without any reference to relevance, but their universal, unfortunate story also tells about one of the biggest catastrophes of our time. The endless movement of many people from one place to another takes place in our century in the same place where the action of the “Greek passions” takes place, in the Mediterranean Sea, which today can be called the Dead Sea, where people die every day. We do nothing to stop these deaths, although our consciousness is rooted in Christianity. In this sense, the opera is very critical – not in relation to us, but in relation to the church, which postulates love for one’s neighbor, and at the decisive moment says to the suffering – no, you will not go any further, you are a danger to us. This opera is significant, this is what makes it special. Such moments for me are not at all a criterion for the value of a work, but they are somewhat decisive and largely explain why these days it is more important to stage Martina, and not the same Grand Macabre.

As not a motto, but a method of reflection, we have chosen for this summer the Hamlet phrase “The connection of times has broken up”, it is largely about the absurdity of the world. Falstaff directed by Christophe Marthaler is also about this absurdity. Someone finds his production terrible, but to me it seems extremely interesting, by the end of the second act it reaches the heights of real art, when the world is already really destroyed. Not much happens in the first part, although the jealousy scene is simply fantastic, and the prologue, with a two-minute projection of the film that no one in the audience sees, is simply brilliant; even if you think this part is boring, it prepares us for the second, when not just absurdity, but chaos takes over the people and the stage. Marthaler creates the illusion that he is not already in control of what is happening, but this chaos that has reigned everywhere.

– Returning to Ligeti – would he be popular if Kubrick did not use his music in his films?

“Probably not. Counter question: what about Mahler? Apart from Bernstein, few people played him. Everything changed after Visconti’s Death in Venice.

– What then does it mean to be popular for a modern composer, only cinema saves him? Previously, contemporaries listened to contemporaries, they were popular, and not the authors of previous eras.

Why should music be popular? We live in a strange situation where music, academic, modern or contemporary, is constantly questioned about its relevance. This is comical for a system called democracy. Democracy has beautiful features – for example, it protects minorities.

We will never reach the moment when we can call Schoenberg’s quartet, Bruckner’s symphony or Monteverdi’s opera popular, but we will never give them up, we will have to defend them, it belongs to us, it is part of art, knowledge, part of the sensual world, the possibility of ennobling the human essence .

— But the concert posters are dominated by old classics, not modern authors.

– Tickets for all operas, including Martina, for all Ligeti concerts, were sold at the festival, the interest is huge. At numerous symposiums on the “crisis of classical music” I constantly say: the classics are not in crisis, they describe the crisis, the Schubert string quartet describes the crisis, The Winter Way describes it, and even Gluck.

– How?

– How?! Everyone! Mahler’s symphony describes various crises – personal, public, political. If we take the finale of the Ninth Symphony – there is an existential crisis, the knowledge of one’s own death, which is already outside the door, there is knowledge of the end of tonality, the usual symphony, the end of the historical and political era that is leaving, everything is in this adagio. Mahler is a central example of how, even in moments of euphoria that transcends all boundaries, music speaks of a crisis.

Today we are immersed in a situation of almost aggressive social movement, when everything is evaluated in terms of morality. But art is immoral, its whole history is the history of immorality.

Carlo Gesualdo, who killed his wife, is quite immoral, to kill his wife, shouldn’t his music be banned? Richard Strauss, with his spinelessness, also constantly comes under fire, should he also be stopped performing? You just have to accept that great art does not necessarily have an ideal character. Why should an artist on stage be better than a spectator in the hall? These are some petty-bourgeois ideas about art as something sacred.

Music has often been instrumentalized in the past, and art is instrumentalized even today, when calls began not to perform Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov or not to publish Chekhov. Of course, they must be performed and published. We, in Austria and Germany, are well aware of the concept of collective guilt, they are now trying to revive it in relation to Russians, Russian culture and Russian artists – I cannot accept this.

– At the last minute, your concert with Matthias Görne was canceled with a program from Mahler and Shostakovich. Will he be back on the show?

I hope to return next year.