JOURNALIST: How do you think, can you do the classical composers justice?

PETER HÜBNER: If the music of our great tone creators is to be treated justly, it must be played by men and women, who, first of all, are committed to the ideals of these great human beings.

Classical music needs musicians who are committed to the Creator, ^Beethoven the truth, to the service to humanity, and not musicians who have fallen in love with their instrument from an acrobatic point of view, or with being in the limelight, money or a career.^Verdi

As paradoxical as it might sound: there are not enough music lovers among today’s professional musicians.^Beethoven

Just to make sure you don’t misunderstand me: I don’t believe that a musician should be poor; no, he should earn a lot of money with the work of the great classical composers, but he should then use it, tirelessly and selflessly, to establish the natural human dignity, according to their ethical request, – and especially as a musician he is faced with an enormous range of tasks in this world.^Wagner

But the great ethical testimonies of the masters of music are unfortunately more and more frequently turned into the show product of hypocritical star-sellers, and during this process breathe their last.^Mozart

Due to these abortive human developments, however, there are abortive musical development with serious consequences.

One of them, is that the musicians in an orchestra do not play with each other, but under the direction of the conductor, without regard of each other.

A naturally structured classical piece of music describes the living togetherness of the inner human powers in their natural evolution.

If this diverse with each other is to find its expression in the performance, the musicians of this natural interwoven play of the inner human powers must be alive themselves during the performance.

Only then can it find its musical expression:^Bach each musician must be capable of being intuitively responsive to the musical-human stirrings of all the other musicians – must be able to answer one voice, link with the other, and strive towards the next etc., etc – according to the logic of the composition.^Reger

But what does today’s practice of making music look like: each musician is playing his instrument, and in his mind is running along the note tracks as if he were on a train – his other eye on the conductor.

The conductor, as the station-master, is giving the instructions, and setting the points and signals.

As a result, the performance loses the dimension of living interpersonal communication, and becomes mechanical, without any regard for each other’s playing. ^Mozart