Evelyn Meining and her team successfully defied Corona – and learned how little the importance of culture is. She says: Politicians need action aids.
Possibly this 99th edition of the Mozart Festival will go down in history sooner than the 100th in the coming year, said director Evelyn Meining at the end of May. The city had announced at a press conference that the Würzburg Festival would take place, despite Corona. It worked: The team had played poker and could even offer live concerts. The live stream on www.br-klassik.de, who opened the festival on June 9, had 104,000 visitors, the third-largest reach at BR Klassik since Corona.
At the end of this Corona Mozart Festival, a few live concerts have become possible. How are your feelings
Evelyn Meining: First the feeling of liberation. That music has sounded again. That we could regain a bit of normalcy. That it was worth it to take the trouble that you would not even see in such an evening. This Corona Mozart Festival has done at least as much work as a full four-week festival edition with 75 concerts. Because on the way there we encountered new planning uncertainties from all sides. We always had to plan with our partners under conditions that we could not have known at the time. Thanks to the entire Mozart Festival team, especially the managing director Katharina Strein, that this was possible.
“This Corona Mozart Festival has done at least as much work as a full festival edition over four weeks with 75 concerts.”
Evelyn Meining, artistic director–Many festivals have more or less canceled without a sound. Was it difficult to get through in Würzburg: we are definitely doing something?
meaning: It was never an option for us to do nothing. By the end of April, we had hoped that the hauntings would be over in June. These massive restrictions on social life in all areas ?? we thought it wouldn’t happen. To may it doesn’t come. Perhaps the absurdity of the situation was a source of hope: We said this virus, we are conjuring it away. And then within five weeks we put together what was now on offer. I have always said that as long as we eat and drink, we breathe, and our soul food is music. Music itself knows crises, it can be a medium of crisis. And that is precisely why it can help people in and out of crises.
What was the attitude of the city?
meaning: That is one of the most beautiful experiences of my years in Würzburg: The top of the city has always been with us ?? from the beginning and continuously. Velvet treasurer, who knows God will have big holes in the household. The town hall always said: do what is possible! That gave me a lot personally. It was fantastic backing.
–For many weeks, the state’s politicians have been silent on culture. How did you feel about it?
meaning: We always knew that culture in a formal sense is a “voluntary achievement” is. This is where the red pencil can be applied the fastest. The fact that the culture was not mentioned for weeks in this crisis, that there were no clear regulations until ten days ago, that surprised and surprised us. We simply would not have thought it possible. We had to help ourselves. It was the creative artists who organized themselves and sought dialogue with politics. For example via the Forum Musik Festivals, to which the Mozart Festival belongs. We said, okay, politics obviously need action, so we’re proposing concepts. But quite independently of such processes: the federal government’s stimulus package is estimated at 130 billion euros. A hundred and thirtieth is said to go to culture. Is it really such a small building block? A billion sounds a lot at first, but the cultural industry does that several times a year.
“We save what is invested in art and culture today in social work tomorrow.”
Evelyn Meining, director of the Mozart Festival–A discussion seems to be developing as to whether we need “so much” culture. The word “highly subsidized” is coming back into fashion.
meaning: First you have to get away from the term “subsidy”. That sounds like alimony. But it’s about investments. Otherwise one would have to speak of subsidies in many areas of society. Culture is an essential component of human life. It distinguishes us, it is the only thing that remains of us. Not the hardware store, not the hair salon, not the beer garden. Not even Lufthansa.
Why is it so difficult to convey?
meaning: We would like politics to take a firm stance on culture. After all, politicians are the ones we choose to do justice to society as a whole. We save what is invested in art and culture today in social work tomorrow. If a society is culturally educated, it will have much less to deal with the dark side like brutalization. Culture is directly related to mental disposition. This is where opportunities should not be squandered by society.
So far, this insight has not been properly implemented.
meaning: It is about forming a community of values. It is a shame and ultimately also irrelevant that you always have to bring out the numbers: how big the industry is, the sales, how indispensable their contribution to the value chains.
The crisis shows that many artists live in precarious conditions. What would have to change?
meaning: I grew up in the former GDR. The creative artists had permanent employment there. There was no such risk of professional activity. We now live in a different world, and that is where the market economy also affects culture. The market only has space for the very best, we cannot change that. The universities would have to stop producing this army of non-employable musicians who could earn themselves with small salaries or involuntarily move to other professions. A study by the Bertelsmann Foundation recently confirmed this once again. Quite apart from that, it’s no secret: Statistically speaking, a freelance musician earns just 10,000 euros according to the artists’ social security fund. In the year.
If you can’t change the market, what then?
meaning: Safety nets are needed. In the old GDR there was the cultural coin. Anyone who bought a ticket, for whatever cultural offer, paid ten pfennigs more. If this system were reintroduced, one could save a large fund that would also apply to musicians who are in need ?? like now in the corona crisis.
Evelyn Meining (* 1966) is a lecturer in cultural management at the music academies in Mannheim and Karlsruhe – and has been the director of the Mozart Festival in Würzburg since the 2014 season. She received her artistic training at the University of Music Dresden in the main subject singing. After completing her postgraduate studies in cultural management in Hamburg, she was, among other things, orchestra and concert manager at the Darmstadt State Theater and program director and authorized representative at the Rheingau Music Festival.
–
–
