u/Un_di_felice_eterea

In the 90s Lufthansa (flight 572) flew a 744 from Frankfurt to Johannesburg and then on to Cape Town. Sometimes it did a beautiful sightseeing detour around the cape peninsula. I took these pictures on short final and once landing at Cape Town airport in a single prop plane with a friend of mine. Nowadays Lufthansa flies direct to Cape Town from Frankfurt in a B789 (LH576). Cape Town used to get 747s also from KLM and Air France, in addition to SAA’s 744s.

S05E03

Last week I attended a Concert by the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra (Osesp) of Brahms's Requiem in which they inserted Wolfgang Rihm's Das Lesen der Schrift, four pieces for orchestra. It consists of four relatively short interludes after four of the movements of the Requiem.

I'd like to hear what other people think of this trend to "deconstruct" what they call "sacred art", so that we can "think about it". After all, music is "not a statue".

I like Wolfgang Rihm's music, but in between the movements of the Requiem it made no sense. It didn't make me think about the Brahms Requiem at all. Candidly, I don't need anything like that to "think" about the Requiem, or any music for that matter. The Rihm disrupted the flow of the Requiem. One quietly starts hearing in one's head the next movement when one movement ends, and then to be confronted with something different is distracting, and imho irritating. Unless of course that is what Rihm intended. Whatever the intention, I found it unnecessarily and in fact unpleasant. Maybe the four Rihm "Readings" can be played afterwards as a tribute by a 20th/21st century composer to his 19th century colleague.

This mixture was highly criticised in the São Paulo press and by classical media social media pundits, for these reasons, and others. Many people said they liked, but failed to explain how and why.

In fact, I personally don't need Rihm (or anyone's thoughts, musical or otherwise) to think about music I have heard. I spend far more time thinking about music I heard live than the duration of the actual performance.