Munich is wallowing in concert hall euphoria. In the eastern nightlife district, the Free State is planning a new hall for 1,800 listeners, which looks like a glowing giant glass coffin and will probably never get rid of its nickname “Snow White’s coffin”. It will cost at least 700 million euros and will not be ready until 2030. In the south, a new 1800 audience hall, a huge wooden box with an attached cultural center, hung in a steel frame and which is very attractive on the inside, is almost ready for occupancy. The project will be inaugurated at the beginning of October, will cost less than 100 million and will be marketed as “Gasteig Sendling”. It is to serve as interim quarters for the old Gasteig in need of renovation, the almost 40-year-old mega-cultural center with libraries, music and adult education centers and the 2500-seat Philharmonie on the edge of the city center, which was built as a fortress and will close for many years at the end of the month.
That is true, at least wistfully, for friends of classical music who have experienced their musical socialization in this hall over the past decades. It all started with the eccentric conducts by Sergiu Celibidache, who repeatedly overwhelmed by slowness and magnificence of sound, who opened the hall in November 1985 with Anton Bruckner’s Fifth and the “Musical Exequien” by Heinrich Schütz. Sergiu Celibidache had to and still has to compete with all of his Munich successors and competitors, who all belonged to the top class: Colin Davis, Zubin Mehta, Lorin Maazel, Kent Nagano, Mariss Jansons, James Levine, Christian Thielemann, Kirill Petrenko , Valery Gergiev, Simon Rattle, Vladimir Jurowski.
The rank of the music city of Munich has been largely certified in this hall over the past 40 years. Despite the often scolded, because in certain places problematic acoustics, which even Celibidache’s volume eruptions were able to support without any noise and, above all, in a beautiful tone. Hardly any other hall unfolds the splendor of an orchestra more beautifully than this one. But what will happen after the renovation, which also wants to readjust the sound of the hall and trust in the world-famous acoustician Yasuhisa Toyota, who has at least transformed the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie into a disappointingly short-breathed sound puzzle?
Their Spanish trumpets, which stand out far from the prospectus, conjure up the apocalypse
35 years ago, the long-established Bonn company Klais built an organ into the Philharmonie, an instrument weighing over 30 tons with 6,000 pipes. This organ has been the eye-catcher ever since, it rises in small units “like a Bavarian village” (Philipp Klais) above the podium. This organ is a wonderful instrument, but it was rarely heard in orchestral concerts, as the symphony composers usually only used the organ briefly and with little meaning. But anyone who has been able to experience it solo knows that it can pounce on its devoted audience like a giant predator, that it can lure and wrench with the sounds of heaven. Their Spanish trumpets, which stand out far from the prospectus, conjure up the apocalypse, the oboe sounds deceptively real, the basses are catacombs.
This instrument, which has now been mothballed for years, can conjure up more sounds than any symphony orchestra. That is why Gasteig celebrated a six-hour organ marathon with six Munich organists who, like Stefan Moser, Friedemann Winklhofer and Edgar Krapp, know the instrument right down to its most intimate secrets. Friedemann Winklhofer, who has been responsible for the technical well-being of the organ for 20 years, calls her “my beloved” and waves her good-bye jovially when he leaves after his last note.
The whole thing is perhaps a final farewell, especially since many comments from the organists and the organ builder echoed the concern that this organ might no longer find a place in the new hall or only in a (greatly) changed form. As is so often the case in Munich, you don’t know anything specific. The evening is also a farewell to the glamorous older male organist team in Munich. Significantly, with Johanna Soller, there was only one woman who (of course) represents a completely different, more modern aesthetic: not so broad-shouldered, influenced by the historical performance tradition and elegantly proving herself to be compatible with the ensemble in two concerts by Georg Friedrich Handel. Johanna Soller plays less musically than her male colleagues, as does the younger Johannes Berger, who also presented a contemporary extensively with Naji Hakim’s “Arabesque” suite.
Unfortunately none of the six organists dared to improvise on this melancholy evening
But Hakim is also committed to tonality. This is the crux of the organist composers, that despite the ingenious Olivier Messiaen, they still do not know how to free themselves from the sound ideas and forms of the 19th century. This is true even for the forefathers of the guild, for the current organ pop star Cameron Carpenter, for the superorganist Jean Guillou, who died two years ago, and even for the brilliant Munich cathedral organist Franz Lehrndorfer, who died in 2013, whose fame is also based on his improvisations with which he like so many of the great French organists concluded his concerts. Unfortunately, none of the six dared to improvise on this wistful evening.
The sound of church organs is often blurred in a monstrous reverberation, while concert organs sound clearer, more contoured, more structured because of the shorter reverberation. This poses problems for many organists which they often try to cover up with their own musical pragmatics. A concert organist is often a bizarre sight. He sits with his back to the audience (Jean Guillou chose the half-profile on his last appearance in Munich to emphasize his Franz Liszt-like appearance), he acts like a spider-like acrobat, whose feet dance around on the pedal almost to the splits whose hands jump up and down on the manuals and often switch on new sound combinations in lightning-fast movements. Yes, the organ has a lot to do with the circus, in which it had a permanent place among the ancient Romans. The English and American concert organ tradition, for which Wurlitzer (the man who is mainly known for slot machines in this country) built the most famous instruments, is at home in shows and circuses. Friedemann Winklhofer’s subtly registered English program and Edgar Krapp’s selection bowed to this art form.
But homage was also paid to the great artistic endeavors of old Europe. Hansjörg Albrecht, the director of the Bach Choir founded by the legendary Karl Richter, played Modest Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition”, written for piano, in a rather uncoordinated duo with percussionist Christian Benning. Stefan Moser, who was the only one who played by heart, provided the overwhelming alternative with the half-hour and final symphony by Louis Vierne, who was chief organist for almost 40 years at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, which was recently ravaged by a fire. Moser’s registrations looked as fantastic as they were organic. In addition, he had opened up this bulky and difficult to interpret work with its five movements, the two slow ones, broodingly lost in the world, intellectually and sensibly. So he was able to convey it enthusiastically to his audience, which was scarce due to the disease. What a terrific struggle for survival, what a rummaging through confusion and resistance to a deeply blissful triumph! Stefan Moser’s stroke of genius makes saying goodbye to this instrument and this hall particularly difficult.