It really is fascinating how relatively quick and drastic society’s reactions to acute, deadly threats such as the coronavirus can be—and it’s good that this is the case. But when it comes to a more chronic ailment like the climate crisis, which in truth represents a far greater threat to all of humanity, people are acting as if we had all the time in the world.

Fast food, that quick bite to eat in between one thing and the other, is a pleasure that exists strictly in the moment.

“Hey, Travnicek, you hear how they closed the opera, too?” – Yeah, so are you missing it?” – “Naaah … as far as I’m concerned, it can just stay closed...”

This year, the zero-year of 2020, we’re celebrating an important jubilee: the 250th birthday of Ludwig van Beethoven, that titan who resisted fate’s tragedies with his immortal music.

Back when I was a child, our next-door neighbour was a woman whom we knew simply as Frau Herta. We lived in an block of rental flats that was beginning to show signs of age, as were the majority of its residents.

Researching, questioning artistic practice, probing the unique process of development that it embodies, searching for its highs and lows—for those thresholds that lead to the next lofty height or open up on the next gaping chasm that lies ahead.

An accusation with which artists have been confronted since time immemorial is that they’re excessively concerned with themselves.

There’s nothing more boring than hours spent regarding our own reflections in the mirror. After all, who really wants to be confronted exclusively with their own, already-so-familiar selves?

At first blush, an orchestra is a group of artists whose playing as a group can sweep the audience away to other planes of being. As pathos-laden as that may sound, it’s true. And those who experienced, say, the performances of Tchaikovsky’s symphonies by St. Petersburg’s Mariinksy Theatre Orchestra this season … they know what this means: active thought ceases …

World culture, to hear Milan Kundera tell it, has Europe to thank for the novel and the symphony. Reading a novel is easily done—everyone can manage that on their own. But a symphony requires an orchestra in order to be heard. It was a centuries-long developmental process that led to the classical and romantic orchestras with their constantly increasing numbers …