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Walter Gürtelschmied

Stories from Walter Gürtelschmied

A Singular Generation
Honoring the timeless stars of a classic era at the Vienna State Opera
Walter Gürtelschmied
01/10/2010

- translated by Cynthia Peck

Is it only my imagination, or did everything really used to be different? No one can say. We have lived at a certain time, and at the opera, we’ve watched all sorts of artistic feats. We weren’t watching professionally yet, and thus all the more enthusiastically. There were gods in singer heaven. And if we are honest, they haven’t lost their value; on the contrary, they are still at the top. That’s not because they are being glorified because of advanced age. Quality is timeless, elusive, it can’t be measured, nor can it be pinned down.

For Sentimental Reasons
Half Tones: October, 2010
Walter Gürtelschmied
01/10/2010

The great Gidon Kremer seems full of self-pity at the moment. But although over 60, he is still bright and energetic; there is no sign of retirement.

In his performance evening, Being Gidon Kremer, at Theater an der Wien, Kremer presented the rise and fall of a (classical) musician, describing a life of suffering by reading out of his autobiography and then doing some hearty fiddling. Born in Latvia of German Jewish parents, he hasn’t given up attempting to cast out the devil with the Beelzebub. No matter which (political) system he denounces or satirizes, he has been a part of it. What was also discretely not mentioned: his abnormal relation to money, his recruiting of lovers from his own orchestra, and how he treats his friends.

09 Johannes Martin and Mojca Erdman
Salzburg Festival: An Enigma
Wherever the shadows are deep, there is also a lot of light
Walter Gürtelschmied
01/10/2010

- Translated by Cynthia Peck

This year’s Salzburg Festival was an enigma. Everyone who attended came to this nearly unavoidable conclusion. But why? 

The Festival must go on. That’s just the way it is. So don’t even contemplate anything else. And don’t think about the rubbish that the people in charge have dreamed up for the next seasons. We are realists, and in Salzburg that’s bad enough.  

The Mysterious Creature ‘Lulu’
How to become a femme fatale
Walter Gürtelschmied
01/07/2010

Translated by Cynthia Peck

Who or what is LULU?

Is she a courtesan? A cheap whore? A calculating hussy? A brazen murderer? Maybe a frigid wife who can only abandon herself to a sex killer? Someone unable to have a relationship or to love? Or maybe even a lesbian? What’s most important? To do business, have social status or buy expensive sex? Does she have any concept of that higher thing called eroticism? Indeed, she is and remains a fascinating enigma. And everyone can and may have an opinion about her. But one thing is sure: Lulu is not a member of society, she is the outsider per se. Passion makes her a taboo breaker.

This or That Coincidence
Half Tones
Walter Gürtelschmied
Cynthia Peck
01/07/2010

There’s no such thing as a coincidence! That’s been said all the way from the ancient Greeks until Wittgenstein.

On Thursday, Jun. 17, Bertrand de Billy conducted his last subscription concert at the Musikverein as the music director of the Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna (RSO), exactly the same day that, at 13:11, the new ORF (Austrian Broadcasting Company) statutes were ratified in Parliament. The new law brings a number of reforms (both of this world and the next), but what is really important is that it guarantees the continued existence of this enormously important orchestra.

Half Tones: June, 2010
Wozzeck, Ruzowitzky
Walter Gürtelschmied
01/06/2010

Every theater has its pitfalls. Just a cliché? But it’s just as common as the superstition in show business that you don’t whistle in the halls or on the stairs of a temple to the muses.

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