More than as a journalist or music critic, Norman Lebrecht (London, 1948) sees himself as the child from the famous Andersen tale who shouts, among the crowd, that truth that everyone knows and no one dares to say to avoid offending the emperor. This somehow predisposes the reading of his latest book, Why Beethoven: A Phenomenon in 100 Pieces which is as much "bare" as it is "comprehensive" of the fundamental works of the genius from Bonn on the occasion of the double anniversary of his birth (250) and the premiere of the Ninth Symphony (200). The director and founder of Slipped Disc - the most influential, controversial, and entertaining classical music news portal, faithful to the best Anglo-Saxon tradition - recounts that he wrote this essay during the bleak months of lockdown, when the silence of the streets "brought back the neighborhoods the singing of birds that resonate in the Pastoral Symphony." He did it, he confesses, with the sole purpose of offering readers the most imperfectly human portrait of the titan of Western culture. Like a greatest hits, its one hundred chapters reveal surprising, and even unpublished, aspects of the life and personality of the German composer while reaffirming the influence of his legacy on the new generations of listeners.
QUESTION. He was one of the first to predict, 30 years ago, the crisis in classical music. How do you see the landscape now?
ANSWER. It is no secret that classical music continues to lose audience and space in the media. It is no longer talked about or featured in the news. It has become something marginal that does not interest 99.9% of the population. There are still people, of course, for whom it is as essential as the air we breathe, but my grandchildren's generation does not attend symphonic concerts. The question now is how we can rebuild the thousands of pieces of a fallen statue so that it shines again as before. I do not lose hope: if anything Beethoven demonstrates that his music is indestructible. It always finds a way out.
Q. Does the future still go through Asia?
A. The Lang Lang phenomenon led millions of children to learn to play the piano in China, where it seemed that the seeds of renewal could take root. However, in recent years, the country has become more authoritarian and closed to Western influence. Today, the country where the most classical music records are sold is South Korea, which holds over 18% of the global record market and is producing a formidable generation of pianists, such as Yunchan Lim and Seong-Jin Cho. With Russia silenced by the war in Ukraine, there is a certain movement in India that could bear fruit... We will see.
Q. The end of the cult of personality of performers and conductors ended the golden goose of mythomania. What must an artist have today, in addition to talent, to forge a long career?
A.They must focus on the music, above all on the music. It must be interpreted well, but above all, told in a way that is attractive: finding a story capable of connecting with the audience. Everyone walks around with headphones on the street and in the subway, but very few are willing and prepared for attentive listening. That is the challenge today.
Q. Your book "Why Mahler?: How One Man and Ten Symphonies Changed Our World?" filled a gap on the shelves. Nothing to do with Beethoven, of whom thousands of books and treatises have been written. What questions have you aimed to clarify this time?
A.The question that serves as the title of the book has haunted me all my life. To try to answer it, I listened again to the composer's entire catalog, his 138 opuses, and selected one hundred key works, one per chapter, to demonstrate that each generation and artist handles their own Beethoven. I discovered that, as in Shakespeare and the Bible, interpretation is as important as the text.
Q. Your Beethoven is far from the myth of the supreme genius: almost autistic, probably celibate, antisocial, insecure, deaf of course, unhygienic, and even ignorant in many aspects, but a hero after all. Why this insistence on bringing him down from the pedestal?
A. Beyond the legend, Beethoven was a solitary person with very few social skills. His world was very small. He lived in Bonn and Vienna, never saw the sea. He faced miseries, constraints, and a disability, but he reached more deeply into the human condition than any other musician. I am convinced that he was not interested in seeing his bust on any pedestal. And perhaps that is why I see him as an almost ideal human being.
Q. In one of the chapters, you demonstrate that the woman to whom he dedicated his "Für Elise" never really existed...
A. It is a fascinating story of theft, fraud, sex, Nazis, deception, and corruption. Hopefully, Almodóvar will get to read it [laughs] as it has great cinematic potential. Beethoven wrote this piece, but there was never an Elise he was in love with. The title was invented 30 years after the composer's death by a professor in Vienna to cover up an undecorous matter in his son's life.
Q. The shadow of Nazism also appears in Karajan's arrangement of the "Ninth Symphony" for the EU. Why does no one want to talk about this issue in Brussels?
A. The Ninth Symphony, which obsessed Stalin and moved Hitler, has been politically distorted in every imaginable way. And I honestly believe that the exclusive club of the European Union does not do justice to the ideal of brotherhood in the Ode to Joy. The answer to these and other contradictions is found on the day of the premiere of that score: Beethoven wanted it to be on a Friday when all the rich were out of town hunting wild boars. Its recipient was the common people.
Q.During the lockdown, while you were writing this book, news spread that Beethoven could be descended from African slaves. What is behind the slogan #BeethovenIsBlack?
A. In this age of medieval mobs, for some people, Beethoven exemplifies the purest form of Western civilization excellence, hence the attacks. The Beatles also sang Roll Over Beethoven in my adolescence. The only truth, beyond any simplistic debate about his ethnic origins, is that Beethoven resisted his own fate with astonishingly independent attitude. He did not profess hatred towards anyone, but he also did not kneel before the powerful. He focused on the only thing he knew how to do: compose.
Q. Your book starts with a question and ends with a statement in fortissimo. What music best defines these 450 pages on the genius from Bonn?
A. It depends on the moment and the person. When I started writing it, I discovered an absolutely moving passage from the second movement of his last piano sonata. There is something indescribable in that Arietta that connects you with humanity, with the idea that we are one people on earth and that, at some point, the door to eternity will open for us.