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It feels good.
And right.
Right and good.
It is actually not worth thinking about or celebrating internally.
You sit in the Berlin Philharmonic and listen to the Philharmonic under their new boss, Kirill Petrenko.
It has always been something special in terms of the enjoyment factor, but not as a cultural activity to be performed, with driving there, listening, clapping, being happy and returning home again.
For exactly one year, however, a concert has been just that - something special, an exception.
Any cultural activity in this country is under suspicion.
And this despite the fact that many courageous and also solvent institutions, above all the Salzburg Festival in summer, have shown how opera, drama and concerts can take place responsibly and free of infection in well-ventilated rooms that are occupied at a distance.
A special test center has been set up in the Berlin Philharmonic
Source: dpa
Politicians did not contest that, in the second lockdown from November 2nd, all the aesthetic lights went out again.
And it has remained so to this day - in Germany probably until at least April 18, in Spain, Russia, in the Balkans and in Asia it looks partly different.
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But now suddenly there was this Philharmonic concert, this only one!
With a thousand masked visitors in the auditorium, seated in a checkerboard pattern, and with 80 musicians on the stage.
Last autumn, people were particularly anxious and smuggled 200 visitors from eerily empty foyers into the 2,000-seat hall as if through an epidemic area.
As part of a pilot project of the Senate Culture Administration, in which the Berliner Ensemble, the Konzerthaus, the Volksbühne, the State Opera, the Deutsche Oper, a club and a congress will also take part until April 4th - if the incidence numbers do not exceed 300.
Participation in this memorable concert was above all a “health protection measure”, as a visibly happy Senator Klaus Lederer announced on the podium before the start.
Official opening strategies should finally be derived from the scientific knowledge gained.
Hopefully.
The result of the smear test in the Philharmonie was shortly afterwards available on the cell phone
Source: dpa
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In addition to a noticeably large number of young people, Berlin's Governing Mayor Michael Müller and the classical music fan Wolfgang Schäuble had also gathered.
And they all sat there expectantly, and the musicians like their boss, they were cheered almost like a fan curve when they entered.
At the end there was an instant redeeming standing ovation.
Because it was simply a fine, good-sounding, completely fear-free concert, without messianic overwhelming.
And because it once again proved that nothing, absolutely nothing, is better than the shared acoustic experience of music in the room - despite all the digital concert hall streams that the Philharmonics are serving regularly to their now paying audience .
Berlin's Senator for Culture Klaus Lederer (Die Linke) was one of the engines behind the pilot project and was a guest at Petrenko's concert
Source: dpa
Collective empathy for physically perceptible sounds in the immediate now, that cannot replace a surround system and canned food.
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The way there was surprisingly uncomplicated, if you got hold of one of the tickets online that sold out within three minutes.
After entering the contact details, there was a link to one of the four participating test centers, where you had to get a free throat swab on the same day.
480 visitors were even lucky enough to have this performed by 45-strong medical staff and accompanying Charité doctors in the chamber music hall next door up to half an hour before the start of the concert.
Because you have long since got used to the sight, the doctors in their protective clothing no longer looked like something from a dystopian catastrophe film.
Of course, only the large, state-supported cultural institutions can afford this kind of effort.
When it was three degrees cold, an astonishingly large number of visitors, surprisingly well dressed by Berlin standards, stood in the forecourt of the Philharmonie.
Some were sitting and drinking champagne as if they were in the eternal Glyndebourne summer.
And yet only waited the 20 minutes for their test result.
The nice, braided Tunisian in the catering mobile was happy about the success of his actually unbeatable walnut pesto spaghetti.
Visitors with FFP2 masks sit in front of the Berlin Philharmonic and are still waiting for the results of their tests
Source: dpa
At the entrance they needed a smartphone with a negative notification, a ticket and an identity card.
In the Philharmonie there was then no more guidance, everyone was allowed to do what they wanted.
To get in the mood in the hall, some academics played Bach's “Jesus remains my joy”.
One sat fearless.
Every second chair is occupied, with the cloakroom in between.
You gratefully soak up the atmosphere of community and closeness.
At 7 p.m. everyone was inside.
All test results were negative.
And let Krill Petrenko begin his uninterrupted 105-minute Russian program with Peter Tchaikovsky's color-saturated “Romeo and Juliet” fantasy overture.
"Once upon a time" it sang clearly and calmly from the woodwinds.
The subsequent upswings of melodies wafted through the hall like flecks of color.
So beautiful!
But Petrenko also showed power paws, the tiger came out of the tank quickly;
always well trained, of course, never roaring thunderously.
On the podium, there were hardly any greater distances to be seen.
Again, like before, two musicians share a music stand.
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The usual physical reactions to each other among the players, it was particularly evident in Sergei Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony, which is rarely heard.
Petrenko fanned out their lustful wood and string compaction elegantly and carefully.
The delicately perfumed clarinet solo in A major exuded melancholy in Wenzel Fuchs' masterly form in the spacious Adagio.
A relaxed skill held the fast-paced finale together from the desk.
From which at the end Kirill Petrenko, he was just all alone on the podium, took off his FFP2 mask and put on after the last bow.
Suddenly, sound-ravished bitter Corona-Nix-Kultur -reality had us again.
When can we hear something like this again?