Talking about life through music

The Beethoven Festival takes place annually in Bonn, the composer's birthplace, and the 2023 opening concert was held in the city's opera house, right on the bank of the Rhine River.

The motto of the 2023 Beethoven Festival was "Über Leben." Artistic director Steven Walter, who headed up the festival for the second year, clarifies what this means:

"I think the English version would be 'music on life.' So it's music about and on everything that creates the conditions for life, so. And that's a very big topic, but also very interesting in its various dimensions… This year it's all about the question: how can we make life sustainable and how do we as humans reflected through music relate to nature? Because nature is, of course, the place that, or the space that makes life possible. And human life is a kind of a special thing within nature."

Where new meets old

The festival's creative team aims to unite the new and the traditional, and you could see this goal reflected in the opening concert program. First up was a piece that pulses relentlessly with the energy of progress: Arthur Honegger's "Pacific 231."

The Swiss composer was part of "Les Six," a group of six composers living and working in post-World War I Paris, who all shared a desire to do away with the excessive Romanticism and complexity typical of composers like Richard Wagner.

Honegger was also mad about trains, and he channeled this passion into "Pacific 231," which is named after a type of steam locomotive. Structured as a single symphonic movement, the piece bursts with power and sound. Paavo Järvi conducted the Tonhalle Orchester Zürich at this year's performance in Bonn.

A cello masterpiece

The next piece we're going to hear is Antonin Dvorak's Cello Concerto in B minor. Dvorak composed it from 1894 to 95, while he was living in New York. Certain passages really exude the excitement that the Czech composer must have felt during his three-year stay in the United States.

But the concerto is also steeped in melancholy and nostalgia for his Bohemian homeland. It's music that unites past and present, and it's one of the greatest pieces for cello ever written.

Its premiere in 1893 in Carnegie Hall was the musical event of the year. According to the New York Herald, the audience exploded into tumultuous applause at the end and cheered "Dvorak, Dvorak"!

Some argue that with piece, Dvorak, a Czech, captured a uniquely "American" sound. What's certainly true is that he drew on uniquely American influences: the Black and Native American musical traditions.

He told the New York Herald that he was inspired by the characteristic traits and spirit of Native American music after receiving some melodies from a friend. He also said that truly American music – as opposed to European music – need to be rooted in the Black musical tradition:

"The future of this country must be founded upon what are called the Negro [sic] melodies. This must be the real foundation of any serious and original school of composition to be developed in the United States."

A young superstar

The soloist in the Beethoven Festival performance was the young Russian cellist, Anastasia Kobekina. Born in 1994 in Yekaterinburg, east of the Ural Mountains, Kobekina began playing cello at age 4. At 12 she was accepted to the Moscow Conservatory. She later moved to Berlin and then Paris to continue her studies.

Kobekina is moved by the deep feelings that Dvorak wove into his cello concerto: "I always get goose bumps when the beautiful violin solo with clarinet comes in just a few measures from the end. It's the favorite song of Dvorak's beloved, Josefina, and it's as if he had seen her alive one more time. She was already dead by the time he finished this cello concerto. And this feeling – that he sees her standing before him, alive, that's she's there, even if only for a moment, for the blink of an eye – I find that so incredibly moving."

Anastasia Kobekina is one of the most exciting artists of her generation. In addition to her native language, Russian, she's also fluent in multiple European languages. After Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, she strongly and publicly condemned the war, and later also performed in benefit concerts for Ukrainians.

Criticism for being Russian

Still, she's had to confront criticism and even concert cancellations for simply being a Russian national. Some in Bonn criticized her headline appearance at the opening concert of the 2023 Beethoven Festival, one of Germany's largest classical music festivals.

Paavo Järvi, who conducted the opening concert, disagrees with the idea of a generalized boycott: "Well, first, I need to first say that I am Estonian, and Estonia has a border with Russia. And we are just as everybody who has a border with Russia knows the terror that one feels over the Russian neighbors. As much as I hate to say this, they are not very good neighbors. And right now, especially, they have obviously made a historic, tragic mistake that has – we don't even know the magnitude of the repercussions for centuries to come of what they are doing now. So I cannot personally disagree with anybody who refuses to play Russian music or who refuses to play with Russian musicians. I personally do not subscribe to this philosophy. I think that musicians and music are a highest form of existence – Russian music or any music..."

And with that, we've reached the end of today's DW Festival Concert recording with your host, Cristina Burack. Thanks to sound engineer Thomas Schmidt and producer Anastassia Boutsko, and thanks to all of you for listening. If you have any feedback, drop us a line at music@dw.com.

Performances in this recording:

 

1. Arthur Honegger
"Pacific 231" 
Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich
Paavo Järvi, conductor

2. Arthur Honegger
"Pacific 231" 
Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich
Paavo Järvi, conductor

3. Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kobekin
"Gallardo"
Anastasia Kobekina, cello

4. Marin Marais
"Les Folies d'Espagne"
Anastasia Kobekina, cello
Emmanuel Arakelian, harpsichord
Archive No.: 8010180 

5. Antonín Dvorak
Symphony No. 9 in E minor, "From the New World," op. 95
Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich
Paavo Järvi, conductor

Edited by: Manasi Gopalakrishnan