Since the corona pandemic, the need for cultural policy has been increasingly discussed, with interests differing significantly from one another depending on the perspective. The SPD chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz has just called in a basic text in Die Zeit for “solidarity between politics and culture, between power and spirit”. He combines concern about the structures of cultural production damaged by the pandemic with the claused demand for clear partiality in art. The culture should also be brought closer to the state and - who can blame it - to one's own party, whereby the nostalgic look back at the Willy Brandt era and the alliance that American artists are entering into with the initiatives of former President Obama are apparently intended to point the way.
Completely different sounds could be heard these days at the opening of the traditional Klangspuren festival in Schwaz in Tyrol. The Austrian State Secretary for Art and Culture Andrea Mayer, who traveled from Vienna, also emphasized the need for stable structures in her greeting. However, she did not plead for a new militancy, but referred to the integrative power of music and its ability to overcome the division of society; In today's situation in particular, it is important for people's mental and emotional health.
Music as a medium for knowing the world and oneself: This lifelike understanding of music is also behind this year's festival motto “Transitions”.
It stands for an opening up of contemporary music beyond the narrow genre boundaries and is intended to draw attention to other cultures as well.
It's about discovering innovative ways of thinking that could help solve contemporary problems, says Reinhard Kager, who will hand over his position as artistic director to the composer duo Clara Iannotta and Christof Dienz in 2022.
According to the motto
With the works of two compositional daredevils, the opening concert provided striking evidence of the festival motto. In “Caminando” the Venezuelan Jorge Sánchez-Chiong recalled the fate of the countless emigrants who are still leaving his country, and for this purpose chose the form of a concert for percussion, piano and orchestra. The drummer David Panzl, who is positioned at the front of the ramp, creates a vital energy flow that dominates the sound, but does not always come together with the orchestral composition, which is split up into tiny rhythmic particles.
The Swiss Michael Wertmüller, on the other hand, struggled with the transition from symphonic to rock music. In the strongly rhythmic concert for electric guitar and orchestra, he - and above all the conductor Titus Engel - succeeded better in keeping the diverging sound groups together and in integrating the fabulous soloist Yaron Deutsch into the overall sound.