Teodor Currentzis: The new project of the controversial conductor star

culture Controversial conductor

How Teodor Currentzis wants to win the West back

Status: 4:25 p.m | Reading time: 2 minutes

West-eastern Maestro: Teodor Currentzis

Those: SWR / Nadia Rosenberg

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The star conductor Teodor Currentzis has been criticized for financing his ensemble MusicAeterna with Russian money. Now he is planning the liberation – with a new, western orchestra project called “Utopia”. Can this go well?

UTopie is the mostly fictitious vision of a way of life or social order that is not tied to contemporary historical and cultural conditions. And Utopia, that’s the name of Teodor Currentzis’ new, international orchestral project. It will start at the beginning of October, with concerts in the Philharmonie Luxemburg, the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, the Berlin Philharmonie and the Vienna Konzerthaus.

The sounding utopia is presented at a moment when Currentzis, this highly controversial torchbearer of the classical era, is getting tight. Politically, things have become difficult for him and his instrumentalist and vocalist collective MusicAeterna, which is financed by semi-state Russian institutions, since the beginning of the Ukraine war.

His most recent performances in Salzburg, which were always excellent musically, were overshadowed by the global crisis. The festival did too little to at least discuss the problems of these guest performances.

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Currentzis, who, like many others, has lent a helping hand to the Axis of Evil to get funding for his otherwise good art projects, is certainly under a lot of pressure. Nothing is for free, not even in the life of an artist. He is ostentatiously silent; we can only guess what’s going on in the conductor, who hasn’t been noticed as a member of Putin or a war party.

Utopia is a clear step by Currentzis to at least partially and cleanly reorganize his professional relationships. That’s why his temporarily estranged allies are back on board. Utopia, the orchestra without a permanent seat, is financed through concert revenues and is supported by the art and culture DM private foundation and by European patrons.

112 musicians from 28 countries are taking part in the first project, including Russians, and rehearsals are taking place in Luxembourg. Of course, it remains to be seen how MusicAeterna’s activities will develop in Russia. Because a clean slate in the west and carrying on in the east will not be utopian.