wienerberger podcast - hosted by CEO Heimo Scheuch

Heimo Scheuch Podcast Episode #18: Culture, Art and Architecture connect with Matthias Naske

• Heimo Scheuch • Season 1 • Episode 18

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We are living in instable times. Things are changing around us and culture plays a more and more important role, especially in communication.  In this episode Matthias Naske, the director of the Wiener Konzerthaus and Wienerberger CEO Heimo Scheuch discuss the dependency between culture – especially music – and the business world. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to my podcast! I'm Heimo Scheuch from Wienerberger and today I have the great pleasure to have with me here Matthias Naske from the Konzerthaus here in Vienna, one of the best, I must say, concert halls in the whole world! Matthias, great to have you here! Thank you for the invitation! I'm happy to be here! It is a very interesting period of time we both live through right now - in business, in the financial world, in politics, but also in the art business, isn't it? It is, indeed. There are influences, that take the reception of art far away from where it has been kept for a while, so it's much more political field at the right moment specifically because of the war, the Russians started against the Ukraine. This is very true and actually as a matter of fact, we had in June of this year our Brick Award. That's an international, the only actually, international sustainable brick architecture award in the world and this year there were a lot of very interesting projects and especially also some winners coming from China and South America and we had a great discussion during the evening talking about architecture and the expression of democracy. The freedom to realize yourself, the freedom to show that actually architecture is not politics and can show that it means something different, to be free and articulated. So it's a little bit the same, I would say, in art, isn't it - and in music especially? Music and art in general serves a lot of purposes with one of the artistic expression humans are able to express is architecture- as you deliver the ground for in a way. It's quite challenging actually to build a bridge in-between architecture and further on music and art, even there are evident relations but in our field, in the performing art, we certainly depend on an architectural format and there I can praise the architects Helmer & Fellner who have created Wiener Konzerthaus 110 years ago, because they had been so wise and so clever that we still profit from their experience and, how should I say, not only motivation, but skills to create space that is very flexible. And one element which might ring certain bells in you is that music and performing art always needs spaces - and spaces create new spaces in the mind of the people. Exactly! And this is what I am always so fond of and the flexibility of these spaces is very much influencing the destiny of the later on development of the organizations. It needs spaces and it especially needs spaces with good and extraordinary acoustics. Yeah, acoustics and flexibility as well. And by the way, the Wiener Konzerthaus has been built with Wienerberger bricks also, so, as you say, more than 100 years ago. 110 years ago already. Yes exactly! It was in 1913. As you know I am passionate of music, especially classical one, but from my perspective you have changed the Konzerthaus dramatically over the years. You've made it a very modern performing house in the sense of combining a lot of music and not only classical. It was quite challenging in a very traditional Viennese sort of art and music world, wasn't it? You know people like me they inherit responsibility for a certain time of the development of an organization and what I always.. what I actually learned in this house in former times, so when I grew up here in Vienna is, that it is important and necessary and a key element of success for any art organization that it kind of surprises the cultural desires and expectations of the audience. So what I would love to say is that actually we simply do,.. we very clearly follow the development of society, of desire, of the cultural desire of people and then we try to bring them as many attractive answers as ever possible. That's a matter of networking certainly but also of keeping a very close relation to the people that we try to address. Talking about the desire or to fulfill the desire of everyone, exactly, these days doesn't it become a bit more difficult, as you mentioned at the beginning, because of political influences, politically correctness, because I have the fear that obviously the freedom of culture, the freedom of music, the freedom to express ourselves gets somehow limited. Limited by certain people who think they have to limit it. It's a social and a media phenomenon, that's correct. We could call it, we could say it. I was extremely impressed by 2 performances I attended by a very exposed and question-marked artist called Teodor Currentzis, recently in Salzburg, where he conducted a youth orchestra, the Gustav Mahler youth orchestra, so a politically correct, completely divers European youth orchestra, but the person himself is Greek and Russian both and people question-marked his moral integrity in relation to the war of Russia against the Ukraine. I mean, I don't doubt that the integrity of this person is intact, he is an artist who kind of protects his group, that is based in St. Petersburg, you could question-mark that, from our side very easily, but it's much more difficult and tricky to do that publicly in the place where he works normally. But coming back to Salzburg, I was so impressed by simply the artistic power, this person has been able to create with his ensemble, with the ensemble Gustav Mahler youth orchestra and his choir and in collaboration with fabulous stage director Castellucci. They did this Bartók Bluebeard's Castle piece and it was one of the most impressive and strongest artistic event I've ever experienced because of the constellation setting because of the nervosity of everyone and on the other side because there I found that art could change situations and it could not solve the problem. Art has no power to solve the problem of an aggressive war, which is, which we all say is absolutely not legitimate. But I think as you say it's important that he goes new ways. He has an absolutely fascinating artistic personality and I think it is very important to keep bridges with him.- Exactly!- For example And I think you mentioned one thing, which is very important, when we talk about art, culture, music and also business. You know it's not that different at the end of the day. We need to build bridges! And it's not always by destroying bridges or by, sort of neglecting the other, it's by going towards the other and building bridges. And still it's a challenge! It is a challenge for all of us, but I think at the end of the day we need obviously to make sure that certain values are respected and I agree with you. I mean aggression is never, and war is by no means the right way, but at the end of the day we need respect and trust and I think music, especially, can bring us together and Vienna has always been a center of music and bringing people together . That's true, that's very true! And let's hope that we do this also in the future. We will! Thank you very much for being here! I will survive! Thank you very much Matthias! Thank you!