The acclaimed debut concert of Teodor Currentzis’ new orchestra in the Vienna Konzerthaus demonstrated how the controversial conductor should be kept in the West in the future.
The audience gathers in front of the illuminated concert hall, a street musician plays. No sign of protests. And yet it was anything but an ordinary evening at the Konzerthaus. On the one hand, because it was the Vienna debut of a newly founded orchestra, on the other hand, because the whole thing was overshadowed by a political debate. Teodor Currentzis only announced in August that he was forming a new, international ensemble that would be independently funded. He had been under criticism for months because he did not distance himself from the Russian regime and sanctioned his St. Petersburg MusicAeterna Orchestra (as before). VTB-bench and Gazprom is funded. The founding of “Utopia” seemed like a hasty attempt to offer the Western organizers a way out.
Since the canceled benefit concert for the victims of the Ukraine war, which Currentzis wanted to play in the Konzerthaus in April, artistic director Matthias Naske has emphasized not to invite MusicAeterna until independent funding has been secured; MusicAeterna is also undesirable elsewhere these days. According to Currentzis, it had long been planned to unite like-minded top musicians in a project orchestra.
Top musicians only. Utopia is actually full of members of top European orchestras, like that Staatskapelle Dresden or the Concertgebouw Orchestra, including nine concert masters. The short lead time aroused curiosity as to whether the targeted top class was achieved. The question was already with Strawinskis “Firebird” suite answered: Utopia plays at a level that hardly any “newborn” orchestra can match.
“Genius is no better analyzed than electricity. Either you have it or you don’t have it. Stravinsky has it,” wrote Jean Cocteau in 1918. Currentzis also has electricity, but whether that makes him a genius is another question. In any case, he gets a really electrifying maximum out of his orchestras – be it the Mahler Youth Orchestra, be it the SWR Orchestra, be it Utopia. It didn’t work out with the Vienna Philharmonic, since the first, unsuccessful collaboration in 2013, the orchestra has refused to play with him, even in the State Opera. But when Currentzis meets musicians who are willing to follow him, he provides intoxicating experiences.
