“What would happen,” asks Karl Ulrich, managing director of Süddeutscher Verlag and chairman of the SZ donation aid organization, “if there were no needy people in our prosperous city?” Then, one could answer, maybe this concert wouldn’t exist. But this is there because it is necessary because, as Ulrich goes on to explain, the need is also becoming more and more visible in Munich, because older people spend an enormous amount of energy trying to cover up the fact that they cannot afford many things because people Suffering blows of fate and then being materially helpless because children no longer get the education they deserve, also in musical terms.
To alleviate this need, there is the Advent calendar Süddeutsche Zeitung. And so that he can help where help is needed, donations are collected. Like here in the Isarphilharmonie, where the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (BRSO) gives its benefit concert; meanwhile a long tradition that was so dear to Mariss Jansons, the chief conductor of the BRSO who died in 2019. The proceeds go to the advent calendar without any deductions, and they should be considerable, the hall is full.
A year ago, this concert was a state act, although instead of the 1800 ticket holders, only 450 were admitted due to the Corona regulations. It was the first concert that Sir Simon Rattle conducted at the BRSO after he had been designated as its future boss (from 2023). This year it’s just an outstanding concert, although it’s just not that easy, more on that in a moment. In any case, Karl Ulrich’s funny sentence is true: “As good and nice as we are in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the Bayerischer Rundfunk can do something better.”
Karl Ulrich, SZ managing director and advent calendar chairman, starts by speaking about the growing poverty in a rich city and thanks the audience, who is helping to buy the tickets, because every last cent of the proceeds goes to the SZ advent calendar .
(Photo: Florian Peljak)
The plan was for Zubin Mehta to conduct the concert. But the 86-year-old’s health is not good enough for this task, and he canceled with a heavy heart. Daniel Harding steps in, arrives in Munich on the morning of the concert, rehearses all day. He says he is doing this in honor of Mariss Jansons and because he wants to help people in need. Harding, born in 1975, has a long and great history in connection with the BRSO, quite a few in the orchestra can very well imagine working with him, the ingenious, stunningly friendly conductor, one day as a boss, “he’s still young”, you hear from musicians.
Conductor Daniel Harding spontaneously stepped in for Zubin Mehta, who was ill. Quite a few in the orchestra can imagine working with the stunningly friendly conductor as a boss one day.
(Photo: Florian Peljak)
And so the concert begins with an exuberant celebration of joy. Only Richard Strauss is on the program, it begins with the “Don Juan” tone poem, from which Harding actually forms a musical narrative that tells of the myth of the great philanderer, of tender longing and triumphant masculinity. Everything is incredibly elastic and elegantly played until the old white man, who is the subject here, collapses in pale and lazy sounds.
After this immediately gripping drama, the young is followed by the old Strauss, the “Four Last Songs”, which, to put it bluntly, has hardly ever been heard so beautifully. Sarah Wegener sings fabulously; you understand every word, she masters the highly dramatic outbursts just as naturally as the intimate, almost spoken. The way in the third song she seduces to end-of-life simplicity, how “going to sleep” appears as the most glorious wishful dream and Anton Barakhovsky plays the solo violin, that’s heavenly beautiful. After the break then the semi-philosophical rumble of “Zarathustra”, here a manifestation of the comprehensive ability of the orchestra, which cannot be shaken by anything. The sound narrative, and that’s fabulous again, doesn’t come to an end with Harding, it echoes openly, in the end there is more question than answer, and so you come back to the reason for this concert, because the need to help people in need never comes up to a degree.