Michael Gielen tribute
Michael Gielen (July 20, 1927 - March 8, 2019), one of the central conductors of the past decades, who, with his commitment to classical modernism and contemporary music, but also with his profoundly seriousness to the substance and core of the works has accomplished lasting performances of the classical-romantic repertoire, has died at the age of 91 years.
He was associated in a special way with the Staatsoper Unter den Linden and the Staatskapelle Berlin as Principal Guest Conductor. Between 1991, when he first conducted in-house - the new production of Debussy's "Pelléas et Mélisande" directed by Ruth Berghaus - and in 2013 he directed numerous opera performances and symphony concerts. In the years that followed, for health reasons, it was no longer possible for him to continue this ever-growing collaboration based on reciprocal affection and esteem. His attachment to the State Opera and the Staatskapelle, for which he has always been very active even in critical times, has been preserved throughout his lifetime.
We owe a wealth of impressive evenings to Michael Gielen: the first performance of Alban Berg's opera "Lulu", which took place in Unter den Linden in 1997 (two years earlier he had already performed this work together with the Staatskapelle Berlin at the Salzburg Festival), the premiere of Franz Schreker's "Der ferne Klang" in 2001 under the direction of Peter Mussbach, as well as the new productions of Bellini's "Norma" and Verdi's "Macbeth" with their innovative artistic approaches. Since 1999 he regularly conducted the Staatskapelle Berlin, rehearsing and presenting a symphonic program with the orchestra per season, with a wide range of music by Beethoven and Schubert, Bruckner and Mahler, Schoenberg and his students, Bernd Alois Zimmermann and Aribert Reimann. With great artistic responsibility, Michael Gielen turned his attention to the performance-challenging works of New Music, but also to the classics of symphonic literature, which he knew how to reproduce and impart in a manner purified of all unreflecting traditions. The performances he has conducted in opera and concert have impressively proved to make the supposedly known appear in a surprisingly new and clear light, in the course of a concentration on the works themselves, conducting virtuoso and thought-deep music, its unconditional and energy to all who have experienced it, has transmitted it directly.
Michael Gielen's biography reflects the history of the 20th century, both political and musical. Born in Dresden, the son of the prominent opera and drama director Josef Gielen, he came to Berlin in 1936. Two years later, under pressure from the National Socialists, the family moved to Vienna to emigrate to Buenos Aires in 1940, because their father was critical of the regime and their mother was of Jewish descent. In Buenos Aires, where Josef Gielen was involved in the Teatro Colón, the young Michael Gielen who was in contact with Erich Kleiber, who influenced him very much as well as with Wilhelm Furtwängler. He studied piano and music theory, in addition he also began to compose. He began his musical career as a répétiteur at the Teatro Colón, and after his return to Europe from 1950 worked in the same capacity at the Vienna State Opera, where he was influenced by conductors such as Herbert von Karajan, Karl Böhm and Clemens Krauss. From 1960 Michael Gielen then held leading positions at opera houses and orchestras - first at the Royal Opera in Stockholm, from 1969 then at the Belgian National Orchestra in Brussels, from 1973 then at the Dutch Opera in Amsterdam. The decade between 1977 and 1987, when Michael Gielen realized legendary productions at the Frankfurt Opera together with Ruth Berghaus (he was also director of the Frankfurt Museum Concerts), is one of the most important of his career, as well as the period of chief conductor of the SWR Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden between 1986 and 1999, in which he wrote large symphonic cycles, with works by Beethoven, Bruckner and Mahler. In addition, Michael Gielen also led the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, in Berlin in addition to the Staatskapelle often the Konzerthaus Orchestra.
At the center of his musical interests were the works of the great composers of the 18th and 19th centuries (especially Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Bruckner and Mahler), but above all the music of the Viennese school with its protagonists Schönberg, Berg and Webern, but likewise also their contemporaries Schreker and Zemlinsky and the composers of the post-war period such as Bernd Alois Zimmermann - whose opera "The Soldiers" was unplayed in 1965 in Cologne - Karlheinz Stockhausen or Luigi Nono.
Michael Gielen was always concerned with the truth of music, with the "utopian" and "longed-for moments," as he expressed it in his 2005 autobiography, "Absolutely Music." The music world loses with him a dedicated fighter for this, our art, a waking, reflective mind who knew about their dangers and has always been new to them. The Staatsoper Unter den Linden and the Staatskapelle Berlin, which owe much to Michael Gielen, will preserve his honorable memory.