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
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
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