JOURNALIST: Herr Hübner, when you nowadays see and hear the work of the great classical composers performed – what goes on inside you?

PETER HÜBNER: Well – I already told you that I have the natural ability to see the music I hear inside automatically in my mind’s eye as a passage.
This also applies for the opposite: when I read a passage from outwards, then I also hear the corresponding music inside.

In my youth, I gave myself the experience of many pieces of work by the classical composers, by reading their passages. And when I later experienced the exterior performance, I was very disappointed, and that has remained so until this very day.

There are many reasons for this, musical as well as human.

I am mainly disturbed by the fact that many musicians and, above all, many conductors quite obviously do not themselves experience the ethical conscience of classical music, and therefore also do not express it.^Beethoven

For Bach, music was a service to God, for Haydn the love of truth, for Beethoven a service to human dignity: I only see this ethical dimension in very few musicians and conductors, and so the performances are lacking life.

If it were alive in the interpreter, all people would come to listen to this music.^Beethoven

Let‘s take the typical stars of the classical musical scene – on the basis of considerations that are entirely marketing-oriented, they are artificially built up by their agents and labels, who are themselves keen to get their financial share as well. They are mainly successful at making money, not so much from an artistic point of view.

Especially the conductors and singers among them earn millions with, supposedly, “their art”.

They earn this money through the work of the great classical composers, who themselves, lived in great poverty.^Beethoven

the work of these classical composers has at least been analysed to such an extent that we can say with certainty that these men showed a high level of intelligence in their creations.

So, it is certain that these composers were not too stupid to earn money.

Why then, in spite of this, were they financially poor? ^Beethoven
If they had had a different occupation, they would have earned above average.^Beethoven

So, if they didn’t do this, it was for the reason that they were totally committed to their task of announcing in music the inner wealth which nature revealed to them, in honour of the creator, in honour of the truth or to serve human dignity, and in doing so, to put all materialistic considerations last.^Beethoven

This magnificent natural ethical inspiration communicates itself to me, when its legacy is revealed to me in its musical scores, and it is almost completely absent, when I hear today’s performances.

And so I am not surprised, when I hear that those superstars in classical business, after initially living a relatively poor life, leave enormous fortunes behind after their death.

What must the ethical ability of a human being look like, who hoards so much money during times, when millions of people are starving, and everywhere human dignity is being trampled on?^Beethoven

And if this is done by using the work of people who have been proven to have been committed to human dignity alone, and were prepared to live in great financial misery, I regard this as particularly unscrupulous. And this mentality also flows into the performance, and scares the plain person off. That is why the plain man and woman are not in the concert hall.

Please do not think that I regard those international nouveau riche classic superstars as an exception.

In this music organisation, with all those agencies, managers and lawyers directed towards money and not human dignity, they only go very far. Many are striving to do the same.^Beethoven

The love of music is to me the love of life, and a natural obligation to musically express the boundless, inner, ethical wealth of nature.

If the work of the great classical composers were performed authentically, then many dignitaries and profit-seekers, who attend the concerts for image reasons, would have a bad conscience, and they would either change or flee from the concert.^Beethoven

But if classical music life increasingly depends on greedy star-conductors, star-orchestras, star-interpreters in need of recognition, who more and more often only attract an equally greedy star-audience,^Nietzsche we must not be astonished if the plain person finds this music inaccessible.^Beethoven