THE WANDERER'S CHRONICLE
N.9

The Bottega
of the
Mastersingers

Guy Cherqui

The Bottega of the Mastersingers

The Lucerne Festival took off with a week full of music (chamber music and symphonic concerts). This abundance was due to Claudio Abbado who had attracted the ultimate in European musicians (most of them his friends) to the Lake of the Four Cantons. After these initial fireworks the Festival follows its normal course, luxurious but less original until 20th September. Several newspapers have stated that this week of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra has changed the face of this Festival. There had already been a slight new development since the opening of the Culture and Convention Centre and since the young artistic director Michael Haefliger had taken over. The conjunction of his spirit of initiative and Abbado’s idea have brought about this change.

The press has abundantly commented the event, underlining the fact that only Abbado could build such an orchestra, attracting musicians from the whole of Europe. It is necessary to dwell a bit on the lessons this event has taught us, which
(as the Spanish press said) constituted a small revolution.

Recently Bernard Haitink, speaking of the crisis of classical music, remarked that without any doubt there were far too many concerts and that due to this mass the quality dwindled. Much has also been said about the commercialisation of culture, but in Lucerne – would the cycle of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra have seen the light of day without the intervention of Nestlé?

Apart from Salzburg Lucerne is the only European festival where so many different musicians and orchestras meet. Most of the others are either bound to an institution or an orchestra (Radio France Montpellier) or consecrated to chamber music, to an instrument or to opera. And yet, the birth of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra has also thrown a new light on Lucerne.

On the one hand there are the incredible skills of the soloists and the quality of the programme. The enthusiasm the concerts aroused – be it at the level of the audience or that of the European press – will surely bring a new audience to Lucerne.

On the other hand, this success is due to two ideas that go against traditional thinking:

- to make music is to tackle it in all its forms, be they solo concerts, chamber music or a symphony,

- good music is made with musicians who are accustomed to playing together, who (to a certain extent) have chosen their partners themselves.

A number of exceptional musicians got carried away by Claudio Abbado’s charisma, but this success was reached somewhat against the traditional forms of musical life. It is no coincidence that some despondent spirits implied that this was no real orchestra. The traditional orchestra is under completely different obligations ( necessity to maintain an audience, trade union demands etc.) which all cause obstacles to the freedom of playing music as you like it. A Debussy programme rarely fills the concert hall and even in Lucerne only the Mahler concert sold out immediately.

Claudio Abbado, much as we have been following him over the years, remains at the same time an artist and a man of the theatre. He has an inborn sense of the theatre, is a great conductor of opera and in particular always keeps in mind the concert itself, a fleeting, irreplaceable occasion. He is a conductor who lets music, not notes be played, he is one who feels, who suggests, but who rarely explains. Thus those who criticize his rehearsals because they expect from their director explanations, justifications, diktats. This approach centred around the short-lived moment of the concert, unique in its way, brings with it that each concert is different, deeply surprising, even for the musicians themselves, who talk of “taking off” (courtesy of Georg Faust). A live performance is per definitionem a unique thing. It appears and disappears in an instant and never will it be seen again. Mahler’s 2nd symphony, heard three times in two days (including the dress rehearsal) was each time different – and never caused the same reaction from the audience. The same could be said of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. For one moment it is perhaps the best orchestra in the world – in the next it has disappeared again and has been dispersed for a year. It is like a fleeting image.

And that is better so: Claudio Abbado knows that to prolong magic so that it becomes a habit is the greatest danger. It must be short, it must be unique, it must break habits so as to have a greater impact on the mind and the heart.

Thus the brevity of the cycle is also one of the reasons for its success. It resembles an explosion and then - “Die Stille nach der Musik”, the silence that follows the music. Silence of a year if one excepts the promised tours which can only be rare considering the enormous logistical problems involved.

This is also an extremely young and committed orchestra, due to the Abbado-effect no doubt. It was a pleasure to see these musicians, bent over their instruments and giving their all. But for Abbado this is also a conditio sine qua non.

These youngsters have the enormous advantage that they do not yet have any (bad) habits, dictated by pratical experience and routine, that they are still open to everything, that they are willing to learn – and these young people are accustomed to playing under “Claudio”. As for the established soloists or the retired musicians of orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic they are present so as to take a bath of youth. If an artist like Natalia Gutman returns to the ranks of a simple cello player, not to mention the Hagen Quartet or the Ensemble Sabine Meyer or the Capucon brothers,it is because they sense that this venture will bring them something new. The real friendship between these artists stems from their mutual artistic respect.

To make music together is also, in the context of a festival, to open oneself to the general public and to let oneself be immersed by this atmospere. The surprising opening of the rehearsals – a habit as far as Claudio Abbado is concerned – gave the whole entreprise a distinct flavour. Claudio Abbado knows that the listeners at these rehearsals are the most respectful as well as the most interested people. He also knows that this way young persons and students can listen to concerts otherwise out of their reach. He knows finally that this is a means of creating a bond between the audience and the musicians so as to be able to enjoy precisely this pleasure of being together.

For all these reasons Claudio Abbado, who hates being called “maestro”, is a master: not in the traditional sense of the term, but because he never stops teaching us something. Whether musician or audience, nobody ever comes unscathed out of his concerts. He is a master because he attracts at the same time young people, established artists and the general public. But he is also an artist in the medieval sense of the term, who created his “Bottega” in Lucerne: a studio where the works of art are both unique and collective and where the master himself puts on the finishing touches. This orchestra (and the whole experience) remind one vividly at the same time of the Italian tradition of the “Bottega” – and also of a German one: something like the brotherhood of the Mastersingers who have found their Walther, a young man of seventy. These two European traditions melt together and bring us yet again to the threshold of the Renaissance.