Classical music year 2014

2014 was, firstly, a year of anniversaries, marking 300 years since the birth of Christoph Willibald Gluck and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and the 150th birthday of Richard Strauss. The latter in particular was ever-present on concert programs up and down the country and worldwide. Highlights included the "Richard Strauss Days" in Dresden and a number of new productions of Strauss operas on stages big and small.

It was also a year of leavetaking, with the deaths of conductors Claudio Abbado (January 20), Gerd Albrecht (February 2) and Lorin Maazel (July 13) as well as stage and festival director Gerard Mortier (March 9), who had once led the Salzburg Festival and the Ruhr Triennial.

Classical Cathedrals: Bayreuth and Salzburg

History was made on the "Green Hill" this year, albeit unplanned: for the first time in the 138-year history of the Bayreuth Festival, a performance had to be interrupted due to malfunctioning machinery on the set of "Tannhäuser" at the opening on July 25.

Quite customary, in contrast, was the controversy that invariably swirls around the festival just before opening day. This time it was "Ring" director Frank Castorf who publicly hurled insults at the management, claiming that his artistic freedom had been restricted and threatening litigation. In November, pictorial artist and controversial director Jonathan Meese made the headlines. Slated to direct "Parsifal" in Bayreuth in 2016, his contract was terminated, the festival said, "for financial reasons." Completely untrue, replied Meese; the reasons for his having been sidelined had been purely "political and ideological." Reactions in the press and the social media to the nixing of Meese ranged from indignation to relief - as they did when the announcement was made that 36-year-old Katharina Wagner, a great-granddaughter of composer and festival founder Richard Wagner, would continue to manage the prestigious event for another five years. Early in the year, the other half of the leadership tandem, her half-sister Eva Wagner-Pasquier (69), had announced she would step aside.

Germany may widely be considered the leader in the classical music world, but the epicenter of the scene lies in Austria, at the Salzburg Festival, which in 2014 clocked up some 270 performances, with much Richard Strauss (the composer co-founded the festival in 1920) and five new opera productions. It was the final year for ambitious festival director Alexander Pereira, who has moved on to the La Scala Oper in Milan. Periera's legacy: an expanded festival with a strained budget.

Prizes and awards

The prestigious "Echo-Klassik" Lifetime Achievement Award of the German Phono Academy went to 85-year-old conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt, while the Vienna Philharmonic took two distinctions in 2014: the Birgit Nilsson Prize and the Herbert von Karajan Prize. In April, Germany's opera scene was heavily represented at the "International Opera Awards" in London. Prizes went to Russian-born Austrian conductor Kirill Petrenko as artistic director of Munich's Bavarian State Opera, the Bayreuth Festival Chorus and to Australian Barrie Kosky, director of the "Komische Oper" (Comic Opera) Berlin.

Another Berlin opera company, the "Staatsoper" (State Opera), continues to house in the city's Schiller Theater. The restoration of its home site "Unter den Linden," having begun in 2010, will come at an estimated cost that has ballooned from 242 to nearly 400 million euros, thus creating the capital city's second current building scandal (after the BER Airport). With that news, it was nearly possible to forget the "Elbphilharmonie" in Hamburg, whose opening had been scheduled for 2010, then postponed until 2017. At a price of meanwhile 865 million euros, the structure is Number Eight on the list of the world's ten most expensive skyscrapers.

Departure and beginning

After three years as director of the Ruhr Triennial, composer and crossover artist Heiner Goebbels said farewell in a spectacular season. Goebbels' trademark: a mix of theater, art, dance and music in ways never seen before and presented at spectacular decommissioned industrial sites. His achievement: 90 percent of the available tickets were sold, and the average age of visitors declined to 47 - highly unusual for a "classical" festival.

As the new director of the Beethovenfest in Bonn, Nike Wagner announced that she would also program interdisciplinary events. Wagner intends to slightly reduce the size and scope of the festival and to integrate it more strongly into the local and regional arts scenes.

Expansion or cost-cutting?

With over 500 music festivals in Germany, nearly quadruple the number 20 years ago, many are classical. These include regional blockbusters such as the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, but also a wide range of smaller specialty events. Festivals are a growth industry.

Other institutions, however, are winding down. After a long search for alternate funding, it was announced this year that the Southwest German Radio Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden and Freiburg would fuse with its sister radio orchestra in Stuttgart. In an interview with DW, Christian Höppner, general secretary of the German Music Council, called the effective disbanding of the orchestra "unprecedented in the history of the Federal Republic." The Baden-Baden orchestra's nomination for a Grammy, announced in December, took on a note of irony.

In an ongoing trend towards consolidation, 37 symphony orchestras have been eliminated in the country since 1992. Some 131 publicly funded concert and opera orchestras remain. Germany is the home of roughly one-fourth of all serious music orchestras and opera houses in the world.

One classical world?

Anna Netrebko generated headlines twice toward year's end. Slated to sing the title role in Puccini's opera "Manon Lescaut" in Munich, she stepped down on short notice in disagreement with director Hans Neuenfels' interpretation. A few weeks later, she was to be seen with Oleg Tsaryev, leader of the Ukranian separatist movement in the eastern part of the war-torn country. Occasioned by Netrebko's charitable donation to the Donetsk Theater, the meeting took place behind the "New Russia" separatists' flag.

Another Russian patriot and global star, Valery Gergiev - the designated chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic - stirred up his own controversy after signing an artists' letter of solidarity with President Vladimir Putin just after Russia's annexation of Crimea. Citing the right to freedom of opinion, Munich officials declined to retract Gergiev's appointment. Whether Netrebko's and Gergiev's political positions will impair their music careers is unclear.

Music to the masses

Taking a cue from American orchestras, the Berlin Philharmonic founded its own label in April. A completely different distribution platform was exploited by Ukranian-born American pianist Valentina Lisitsa, who clocked up over 62 million views on YouTube. In December, online platform Medici.tv concluded its series of free live webcasts with a recital by Daniil Trifonov; the service reports approximately 485,000 views per month. The stellar 23-year-old Russian pianist was himself nominated for a Grammy in the category "Best Classical Instrumental Solo." Trifonov was among the worldwide stars to be heard in concert in Germany - in fact, very few of them weren't.