Thank you for the financial crisis

Although the heading of my today's blog may sound a bit cruel, nevertheless I would like to make a kind of comment on the crisis from a different angle. Within the art-sector - though not exclusively - the pain of dried-up grants and subventions is being felt quite heavily. Yet, as a manager, I am a bit amazed by the fact how things are going.

First and foremost, the crisis was not too unexpected. For financial experts and economists, it is already an obvious given, that a crisis is a cyclic occurrence, which we are faced with every 10-15 years. The sad thing is, however, that mostly we hardly ever learn from the previous. Despite these signals, those who are in fact the experts, are also the ones who deliberately create the next crisis. What did we learn from the hedge-funds? Nothing: We just jumped into a similar empty bubble.

Ever since the rise of Liberalism there is a group of people (mind you: wealthy people), who somehow are trying to find a way, to become more wealthy. And mostly at the expense of others, and to be more exact: the poorer masses. I am definitely not talking of solutions like those by Karl Marx (although, in the light of miserable poverty during the industrial revolution era, quite understandable). When we just take a look at the Great Depression of the 1930s, where through thorough government interventions of President Roosevelt, the United States were able again to slowly crawl out of the ditch. As we compare later the total opposite political programs of the let's say Reagan and the Bush (Jr) administrations, we see again sharp declines. And although Republicans complain about the Democrats, who - in their view - have a devastating economic policy, it is exactly the Republican administrations that cause soaring huge state deficits and an ailing economy, while the Clinton administration has left the White House with the biggest surplus in history.

History clearly showed, that Reagonomics, Thatcherism and other laissez-faire inclined politics have led our world economy to the edge,by becoming so greedy, that those empty bubbles (like the internet bubble, the finance bubble) were the obvious result of uncontrolled money-hording, which slowly has become a norm. Our society is hardly interested in culture or arts anylonger. What is cool nowadays, is a big jeep, a big house (with a number of rooms, you hardly will ever use yourself). Now that joy is over. And the crisis is again - like a catharsis - showing us a mirror, giving us a change - to cleans ourselves where we should earnestly ask; "what have we done?". Mind you that those CEOs or CFOs, who were heading with these companies into this mess (and they should have known in the first place), are - at worst - leaving the almost bankrupt companies with a multi-million severance package, while those, who were down the ladder face perhaps long-term unemployment, losing everything they have. Should we just tolerate such??? Well, we agreed somehow to let loose the control mechanisms, as we were so eager to reap the seemingly unlimited profits. Lulling ourselves into a comfortable worriless sleep. Another question springs up in my mind: Since economic theories - in their whole extent - can hardly withstand time and prove to be fully invalid after a number of decades, how can some Nobel-Prize winners seriously be convinced of their theories - knowing that economics is no dogma - or is it because they get the benefits of it too (as was the case in the LTCM crisis)?

It is perhaps time, finally to wake up and to reconsider our values; that perhaps we really don't need a jeep to bring our kids to kindergarten or for going to the supermarkets. Maybe other values in society - e.g. to enjoy reading, art galleries, concerts, are contributing far more to our character-building than that what we have been doing for the past years, by consumption-materialism beyond belief. Perhaps, this can be a good starting point to re-design our societies; to prioritise again, and choose for more sustainable values in life.

MS

Bio-Music...

A few days ago, while I was somewhat hastily shopping in our local supermarket, I stopped pondering over the choice of buying a box of regular tomatoes, or the (much more expensive) biologically grown equivalent. As we prefer tasty, fresh, Mediterranean delicacies, my choice was easily made. Sorry for the bleak, cheaper-produces, glass-house tomatoes from Holland. This time it was not only a matter of "better taste", but also the knowledge that one would not be chewing some chemical residues or pesticides along with it. At the same time, an older article by Christian Holst crossed my mind, where he made a striking comparison between strawberry flavoured Bio-yogurt and an artificially modern manufactured flavoured strawberry yogurt as a metaphor for recordings of Rene Jacobs and those of Herbert von Karajan. As I am - personally - not very much inclined to Karajan at all, nevertheless I do try to make the choice between the modernistic approach and the Historically Informed Performance practise. And, as Christian Holst correctly mentioned: "The modern artificiall strawberry jogurt may taste more-strawberry-like, yet it does not make it a better yogurt". Why do I expand on this right now?

As we find it nowadays necessary, in general, that we inform people about health hazards and being conscious about our weight, dietary habits, etc., yet the promotion of early music in Slovakia is not always regarded as being nonsensical, unnecessary, even up to the extent of being perhaps blasphemic. And while the rest of the world already accepts Historically Informed Performances, the Slovak Culture Ministry - including the Bratislava Music Academy - seems to smother every serious attempt to have early music thoroughly researched and studied. Moreover, the Ministry of Culture holds back grants, referring to the already active music repertoire of early music of the Slovak Philharmonic. The times that - let's say - the New York Philharmonic or the Philadelphia Orchestra played e.g. Bach or Handel are way back in the past, and no serious conductor would dare to put these compositions with such orchestras on the bill, since it does require a bit of a different apporach. Yet the Slovaks have still the idea, that they live in a time-capsule; we still live somehow in the 1960s, and that Bach can still equally be performed à la Karajan, Ormandy or Stokowski.

A few weeks ago, the Slovak violinist Juraj Čižmarovič (currently concert-master at the West Deutsche Rundfunk Orchestra) was playing - together with befriended musicians/quartett players - Antonio Vivaldi's The Four Seasons in the historic building of the State Opera in Bratislava. What was so sad about this action: This was not Vivaldi. Even if Mr Čižmarovič and his colleagues have no interest at all for the permormance of baroque music, he even showed off in front of the camera his virtuoso-techniques... by not even being able to play the correct notes, playing the ones left even embarrassingly out of tune.

If this is the level, how an instrumentalist is still being hailed (despite the embarrassment he demonstrated so publicly) as almost "the greatest Slovak violinist", it says a lot about the audience as well as the arrogance of a certain group of (colleague)musicians and their political patrons. Ignorance and arrogance is widely ruling, and they have become - thanks to the label of playing under the Slovak Philharmonic, Opera, or whichever institute - thoroughly and utterly complacent. But still: you may prefer the artificially flavoured jogurt, just because your taste-buds are spoiled by mere chemicals, the only truth about which product is truly of better quality is very obvious. Perhaps to think whether we should invest more into the musical bio-strawberries before they completely die out.

MS

Culture is not about just being old-fashioned...

Writing a blog is fun to do; it gives you an opportunity to analyse your own thoughts, it saves time as potential customers can scan your opinions (or let's say; free advertisement) and you don't have to go through time-consuming publishing processes. When placing a web-counter/stats application it gives you also a feedback of who is reading your blogs and ... for what reason.

For the past few months, I have analysed my page hits, and come up with an odd finding: whether readers are from India, Nigeria, Canada or the UK... I can see remarkably many search requests for "is culture static/dynamic?". Scaringly similar! And although financial crisis or not, whether a certain political coalition is favourable to culture or not, it seems that there is a universal quest for finding out whether culture is something that is static (stiff, unchanging, conservative) or dynamic (subject to changes, flexible...). And it makes you think even more about exactly these search queries.

When taken only at our modern setting's outlook, we consider perhaps modern mass-media culture as being dynamic. In my case, I am referring actually to culture as not being MTV-spots but to culture of music traditions. Music from the Renaissance, Baroque, Cassicism, Romantic period... Music of our forefathers - therefore long long ago,.. thus "static". Yes, music of our forefathers, but nevertheless so much alive and exciting to fathom. Why fathom? Because through time, to a certain level, we have lost touch with it. Now, in our modern era of almost unlimited access thanks to internet, we can re-discover the dynamism of early music even re0invent the clear sound of late-romanticism, which we have unfortunately polluted with overly-zealous vibratos losing cristal clear intonations and harmonic cleanliness, making the music more alive and appealing.

A few weeks ago, I have invited some friends - who would hardly ever go to a classical concert - to a concert of the ensemble Musica Aeterna. Playing French baroque music, this would perhaps be a different planet to them. Although they would never tune their radio to a classical station, or buy a CD with Pinnock, Gardiner and whoever else, they were much astonished about the vibrant vivacious nature of the performance, even intrigued to the very end.

Pursuing research regarding old manuscripts, performance practices, is usually an exciting quest -almost an adventure. You blow off the century old dust and find out about the lively emotions of musicians of centuries' ago. And discover that we do hardly deal with stiff two-dimensional painting like figures but true people living through all strata of human feelings, which resemble ours. When approaching early music with such a "jazzy" attitude, it can be demonstrated that even "early music" is hardly a kind of dinosaur skeleton in a dusty museum, but a exciting encounter with our forefathers who are exactly... like us. It shows us, how wrong we have perceived their lives. Culture is hardly from static; it is dynamic and fully alive.

A happy and musical 2009 to you all!
MS