Talk with Welser-Möst

Welser-Möst: Don’t turn a blind eye to the artistic director!

Meinhard Lukas (left) and Franz Welser-Möst during the discussion at the Brucknerhaus in Linz

(Bild: Wenzel Markus/Markus Wenzel)

On Tuesday evening, a talk about the future with Franz Welser-Möst at the Brucknerhaus brought a positive mood of optimism. The next shock followed on Wednesday: René Esterbauer, commercial director of LIVA, was dismissed, as we reported earlier. What does the future of the concert hall look like now?

A fired Brucknerhaus artistic director, a mayor who had to resign after a chat scandal: the Linz concert hall on the Danube has been dogged by scandals for weeks. Now the next shock: with the dismissal of René Esterbauer, commercial head of LIVA, by the managing SPÖ deputy mayor and acting owner's representative Dietmar Prammer, the Brucknerhaus is de facto without a manager.

Prammer now prefers an interim solution for the artistic management that does not have to be put out to tender. This means that the "Future Talk with Franz Welser-Möst", which had taken place the day before, could have been in vain. However, Meinhard Lukas, member of the LIVA supervisory board, emphasizes that this is not the case.

The aim is to lead the Brucknerhaus into a good future after this damage to its image.

Star-Dirigent Franz Welser-Möst

And hopefully the politicians will also take this to heart, as the first visions for the future artistic director and the house became tangible in talks with star conductor Franz Welser-Möst.

No more compromises on the artistic directorship
On finding an artistic director, Welser-Möst explained: "It is important that the institution - the Brucknerhaus - knows what it wants - and then you have to find a face for it." And he appealed for the new artistic director to be "not an apparatchik".

The Supervisory Board must also demand "that the requirements are met exactly": "You have to find a person who understands that they are there for the institution - and not the other way around." Loud applause from the audience, the middle hall was well filled!

Whether the interim artistic director will bring this to the table can only be seen once they have been appointed.

The person must have the ability to think outside the box.

Franz Welser-Möst

from left on the podium: Meinhard Lukas, Franz Welser-Möst, Andreas Meier, Norbert Trawöger

(Bild: Wenzel Markus/Markus Wenzel)

The audience was able to express their wishes
The talk also heard suggestions from the audience, who wished for the return of standing room, which was once abolished, or a sound cloud suitable for the disabled. Speaking of which: the Klassische Klangwolke is to be broadcast outside again in 2025.

I'm a big fan of outdoor broadcasts because it's like a fishhook to arouse curiosity about music.

Franz Welser-Möst über die Klassische Klangwolke

Hot potato "theater contract"
The homelessness of the Bruckner Orchestra since Luger terminated the theater contract between the city and state in 2018 was only a subliminal topic, it obviously remains a hot potato, because the Brucknerhaus belongs to the (red) city, the orchestra to the (black) state.

The question of how the city and state could join forces remained unanswered on the podium. But the audience made it very clear that a "symbiosis of Bruckner Orchestra and Brucknerhaus" was only logical and desirable for concert-goers.

Visions for cooperation
Of the mayoral candidates, only Deputy Mayor Martin Hajart (VP) was in the audience and spoke about the relationship between the city and the state. In his view, it was necessary "to consider not only a theater contract, but a general cultural contract between the city and the province".

However, the extent to which these suggestions will fall on fertile ground, even with an "interim solution" for the artistic management, must now once again be called into question.