Before the Konzerthausorchester concerts on  and November 29 and 30, Joana Mallwitz addressed the audience in the Große Saal. In addition to the urgent warning that the cuts in the Berlin Department of Culture were “threatening existences in their short-termism and lack of planning”, the chief conductor emphasised that, together with her colleagues, she would „do everything we can to ensure that we have even more music in this world in the future and not less”.  She called acoustic classical music a treasure that must be protected and a living art that brings people together in feeling human, which, she concluded, makes us all allies.

Read Joana Mallwitz's entire speech here.

Dear audience here at the Konzerthaus,
I would like to apologise for addressing you today before the first note, but there is no other way.

When I planned this evening's programme, I was primarily concerned with the experience of listening. The work by John Cage, "4.33", now a classic of music literature, is a fully composed silence lasting four and a half minutes. And everything that happens in these four and a half minutes becomes part of the art, part of listening together. Silence sometimes opens our ears and then allows us to hear with different ears. I believe in the power of listening. I believe that listening can change a person. And that listening together can change us all. That it is listening together that unites us as a society and as a community, welds us together, moves us forward, strengthens us.

What I could not have foreseen was that this piece of silence today - just a few days after the Berlin Senate announced that it would be making unprecedented cuts to the entire Kulturresort from January next year and in the following years, cuts that threaten its very existence in their short-term nature and lack of planning - that this piece of silence today would not just be an experience, but a warning.

We will not overcome the many crises of today's world if we do not have these places where we are united in listening. The time when we desperately need music, not just as individuals but as a society, is now.

And if we are not careful and do not protect this treasure - the acoustic classical music to which we owe so much in Europe and a tradition that has grown over many centuries - and carry it beyond crises and short-term decisions, then this will be final, then future generations will soon find nothing but silence in such wonderful places as our Konzerthaus. Were these places rebuilt less than a generation ago from war and destruction in an nearly unbelievable feat of strength, only to be left to die? We have to ask ourselves what future we are actually saving for if this future is so quiet.

So what do we do now? What can we say, what can we do? Many people have advised me: instead of giving a speech, you should actually cancel the concert, send a signal about what will happen if we cut culture to the bone.
But I don't believe that. Yes, the cuts will also hit us hard, they will reduce our programme, things will be cancelled, will have to be cancelled, festivals and educational formats will not take place, the big festival "Projections", which was supposed to take place in February, has already been cancelled, our academy for training young musicians is acutely endangered. But we will make music with even more passion, we will make music for you even more unconditionally, we, all my colleagues here with me on stage, and on all the stages of Berlin, will do everything we can to ensure that we have even more music in this world in the future and not less.

Music is a living art. It only lives when it is heard, when it is played. And it brings us people together, unites us in the feeling of humanity, no matter how great or irreconcilable the differences in real life may seem. No matter how you got up this morning, what you ate for breakfast, which books you read, which party you vote for, which God you believe in or not: we are all here together tonight and each and every one of you will take away from this evening what you want, feel what you want, think what you want. And that's what makes us all allies.

So maybe that's exactly it. Come to concerts, come again and again, tell others (and I'm not saying that because we would run out of audience here, as you can see), and best of all, take someone with you from time to time, your neighbour, your colleague from the office, and if someone says: I don't know that at all and I don't know whether I like it, then tell them that's not the point! We experience something together and afterwards we can sit together over a glass of wine, discuss or celebrate. Bring your nieces or nephews, your grandchildren, and probably an old friend from school on top who wouldn't otherwise come here - not to lecture, but to experience something together. To share something of the great culture that unites us here and that is open to everyone and truly everyone.

And that is why I hear in John Cage's silence not only a warning, but also hope. Silence does not have to be the end, it can be the starting point, the starting point for a new development, for ideas, for focus, curiosity, expectation, hope and, of course, for music.

With this in mind, I wish you and us an evening that will hopefully bring you bliss, and a future which will bring many more such evenings.

Photo: Simon Pauly