Due to the station's internal regulations, the broadcasting hall of the Hessischer Rundfunk (HR) may not currently be used for public events.
Against this background, the "cresc..." festival has now also been cancelled, but without this being mentioned in the notification as a reason for the postponement of the "Biennale for Contemporary Music Frankfurt/Rhine-Main".
As the FAZ found out, the regulation has been in effect since the beginning of January, without it being publicly informed.
Accordingly, HR feared that demonstrations by lateral thinkers and opponents of vaccination could have taken place on the Dornbusch as soon as the closure had been made public.
The internal reason for the closure of the 840-seat hall, which could currently be occupied by 250 visitors and the hr symphony orchestra should have played on February 25th and 26th at the festival opening, is the efforts of the HR "Pandemic Working Group", urgent to maintain the ability to transmit.
External persons should be kept away from the HR buildings in order to minimize the risk of infection for the critical infrastructure.
In the hr symphony orchestra, a 3-G regulation currently applies with a vaccination rate of 90 percent, and pool tests are carried out daily, said Michael Traub, the responsible music director at HR.
There are also special permits for the orchestra to engage external musicians as guests.
The HR musicians are busy with recordings, rehearsals and streaming concerts, for which the broadcasting room is still used, and are not on short-time work.
"We want to play in front of an audience, it was a salvation when that was possible again," Traub clarified and at the same time defended the measures.
The concerts of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra in the Alte Oper scheduled for February 10 and 11 would also be canceled because an occupancy of the Great Hall with 250 visitors would correspond to a capacity utilization of ten percent and would not be economically viable.