Two Renowned German Orchestras Meet Their End?

Despite significant protests, Germany's SWR broadcaster will fuse its two in-house orchestras - including one known as a bastion of contemporary music performance. Thoughtless destruction or an understandable proposal?



"The days of well-financed patronage appear to be over," said SWR Director General Peter Boudgoust in reference to the broadcaster's two orchestras - the Southwest German Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra - merging into a single body in 2016. The new group, with its home in Stuttgart, will adopt the first orchestra's name - the Southwest German Radio Symphony Orchestra - which is currently based in the southern German cities of Baden-Baden and Freiburg.



In light of severe financial troubles, SWR hopes the move will save five million euros ($6.73 million) per year.



Big protests



In response, conductors and composers denounced the orchestra fusion as a marginalization of culture. The German Music Council called it "a sin against cultural variety," and the government-sponsored Council's secretary general, Christian Höppner, went as far as to call the decision "cultural barbarism." He tells DW the terminology of "fusing" the orchestras distorts the situation.



"The so-called 'fusion' amounts to destroying the Freiburg orchestra," Höppner told DW, calling that body of musicians "a work of art." There have been heavy protests right up until the end in favor of preserving the orchestra based in both Freiburg and Baden-Baden.



SWR spokesman Wolfgang Utz said that the financial situation facing both orchestras would eventually lead them into mediocrity. That view was behind the decision to invest the total orchestral budget in a single group, in an effort to let it work under the best financial conditions possible. Utz adds that only by doing so did SWR think it would be possible to pursue new ways of transmitting the orchestras' music - such as a digital concert hall aimed at targeting new audiences.



Outcry from new music devotees



The orchestra based in Baden-Baden and Freiburg has written music history in the nearly 70 years since it was founded - particularly in its attention to new music. That prompted more than 300 composers and conductors - including some of the most famous in the classical music scene - to write an open letter in late 2013 in favor of preserving the orchestra in its current form.



"There is arguably no other orchestra in the world whose musicians are so unwaveringly dedicated to contemporary music," its authors wrote. They also warned of serious artistic problems, saying, "No other conductor will be in a position in the foreseeable future to mold an orchestra whose reputation could compete with that of the two that are intentionally being destroyed."



After all, a good orchestra is more than just the combination of capable musicians, as Höppner points out: "World-class orchestras work for decades at developing their own sound profiles so as not to fall into playing with a generalized and non-distinguishable sound."



Having it too good?



But the protests against the fusion plan proved fruitless. Germany remains proud of its comparatively heavy public investment in culture. This undisputed richness is a heritage of the many small states in the 18th and 19th centuries in which each segment of the patchwork quilt housed its own orchestra. Today, Germany has 131 professional orchestras, 13 of which belong to its various public broadcasters.



Such broadcasters, too, can look back on a storied history. After World War II, Germany's occupying powers developed a decentralized model of public broadcasting in a bid to prevent the sort of centralized propaganda as it existed during the Nazi era. The newly formed stations' tasks weren't limited just to disseminating information. They were also intended to transmit culture, which is how they began founding their own ensembles, establishing concerts, recording music and commissioning new compositions. The extent of the public funding of cultural activity is considered unique world worldwide.



SWR itself came about through the fusion of two broadcasting entities, which is how it ended up with two major symphony orchestras. Do the complaints about SWR's plans for 2016 suggest that people have lost touch with how comparitively good the cultural situation is in Germany?



"Anyone who says that there's too much publicly financed culture hasn't gotten wind of developments in recent decades," says Höppner.



In keeping with a global trend, the number of orchestras in Germany has been falling. Since the country reunified in 1990, it has lost 37 state-funded orchestras, particularly in the East. The German Orchestra Union says there's no end in sight for this trend.



Now there is set to be one less well-known radio symphony orchestra. Although Höppner recognizes that his country's cultural scene still fares well overall, he cautions, "In the long term, Germany is playing with its reputation for being a cultural stronghold."