The Berlin Philharmonic was founded in 1882 by 54 musicians who wanted to govern and manage the orchestra themselves. The players elect their chief conductor. On 11 May 2015 they met to choose a successor to Simon Rattle. The meeting lasted eleven hours. After long discussions and several rounds of voting, there was no result. On 22 June 2015 it was announced that the orchestra had elected Kirill Petrenko.
music
The Orchestra Chooses Its Own Members
The members of the Berlin Philharmonic have voted for more than a century on who may join them. In 1982 the chief conductor, Herbert von Karajan, brought in the clarinetist Sabine Meyer. The orchestra’s members then voted against her appointment by a large majority. Karajan sought complete power over auditions. Serious differences followed between him and the orchestra. The orchestra’s own history says that the collaboration of the late years was overshadowed by disputes and estrangement.
The Urtext Edition
In 1948 Günter Henle founded the G. Henle Verlag. It publishes Urtext editions. These are scores prepared by scholarly and philological methods for musicians to play from. They are based on the composer’s manuscripts, copies and early prints. The dove-blue covers have stayed the same since the early years.
Three Versions of Fidelio
Beethoven wrote one opera, and he wrote it three times. The first version had its premiere on 20 November 1805, after more than two years of work. A revised version followed on 29 March 1806, and Beethoven withdrew it after the second performance. The third version, now called Fidelio, was first performed on 23 May 1814. The revision took him almost half a year. Along the way he wrote four overtures for the work: Leonore I, II and III, and the Fidelio overture. He wrote to his librettist Treitschke: die oper erwirbt mir die Martirerkrone. The opera is earning me the martyr’s crown.
You Set the Rule Yourself
In the third act of Richard Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, the young knight Walther has already failed the masters’ singing test. He wants to write a new song, and he asks the shoemaker and master singer Hans Sachs: Wie fang’ ich nach der Regel an? (How do I begin according to the rule?) Sachs answers: Ihr stellt sie selbst und folgt ihr dann. (You set it yourself, and then you follow it.)
The National Anthem by Letter
Germany’s national anthem rests on an exchange of letters. In May 1952, after an exchange of letters between Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and President Theodor Heuss, the Lied der Deutschen became the official anthem of the Federal Republic, with one rule: Bei staatlichen Veranstaltungen soll die dritte Strophe gesungen werden. (At state events, the third verse is to be sung.) After unification, President Richard von Weizsäcker wrote to Chancellor Helmut Kohl on 19 August 1991 that the third verse ist die Nationalhymne für das deutsche Volk, is the national anthem of the German people. On 23 August 1991, Kohl agreed in writing, namens der Bundesregierung, on behalf of the federal government.
The Orchestra’s Trial Year
A musician who wins an audition for a German orchestra is not yet a member for good. The collective agreement for German orchestras allows a fixed-term trial contract of up to eighteen months. Before a musician is hired, before the contract is extended and before a dismissal, the orchestra’s board must find out the opinion of the orchestra. In one case, a violinist in the first violins at a state theater had a twelve-month trial from October 2013 to September 2014. The orchestra voted against her in June 2014, and her contract was not extended. In 2017, the Federal Labor Court ruled the fixed term invalid. Counting her earlier work with the same orchestra, the trial had been too long.
The Elbphilharmonie
Hamburg’s concert hall on the Elbe was first planned to be finished in 2010. The city’s share of the cost was first calculated at 77 million euros. In the end, construction cost about 866 million euros, and the first concerts took place on 11 January 2017. A committee of inquiry of the Hamburg parliament examined what had gone wrong. It found that when the work was put out to tender in 2006 and the contract was signed in 2007, the planning noch nicht weit genug fortgeschritten gewesen, had not yet advanced far enough.
The Yes-Sayer and the No-Sayer
In 1930, Bertolt Brecht and the composer Kurt Weill wrote Der Jasager, the Yes-Sayer, a school opera to be performed by students. It was first performed on 23 June 1930 in Berlin and broadcast live on radio. In it, a boy agrees, according to the Großen Brauch, the great custom, to be thrown into a valley. In November 1930, students at the Karl-Marx-Schule in Berlin-Neukölln performed the piece and discussed it. On 9 December, their teacher sent Brecht the minutes of the discussions. Brecht printed extracts of the students’ suggestions in his own publication. Based on their objections and on the reviews, he wrote a counterpart: Der Neinsager, the No-Sayer, in which the boy refuses and successfully contradicts the verdict.
Ask, Not Demand
On 16 November 1976, the leadership of the East German ruling party stripped the singer Wolf Biermann of his citizenship while he was on a concert tour in West Germany. The next day, a group of leading writers and artists met at the home of the poet Stephan Hermlin. Among them were Christa Wolf, Heiner Müller, Stefan Heym and the sculptor Fritz Cremer. They wrote an open letter: Wir protestieren gegen die Ausbürgerung, we protest against the expulsion. They asked the state to reconsider the measure. According to a witness, the word bitten, to ask, replaced the original fordern, to demand, at Cremer’s suggestion. More than one hundred other artists joined them. Some were expelled from the party, others received party penalties, and more than one hundred artists and writers eventually left the GDR.