Pretentious People

Yesterday I had some delicious "Grühnkohl mit Mettwurst" (kale with smoked sausage) at the Weihnachtsmarkt next to Deutsche Staatsoper here in my hometown Berlin together with wonderful and beautiful soprano Annette Dasch who had just made her debut at La Scala.

Even though we both grew up in former West-Berlin, same district (Schlachtensee), we never met in Berlin before (once at a festival in Cambrai). We had been in touch about some possible cooperations and now it was just nice to talk and get a feeling where we stand as musicians. I found our shared frustration about a certain group of listeners in this music world very interesting. The kind of audience member who is in it not for the love of music or the pure enjoyment of it, but for the glory, the money, the connections - music as a society event. Obviously this is more pre-eminent in the opera world, but the art of listening and letting yourself get lost in an evening (as audience member) without trying to prove anything to anybody is in my eyes underrated. Often people think they have to say something intelligent about what they heard, feel they have to compare it with the another performance, but to let anything through directly to your soul is rare, and this is what music reception means at least for me.