Everything is right and still stupid: The US musician falls on his face as a classical composer.
When Rufus Wainwright, inspired by Berlin and his youthful spirit of adventure, released fantastic albums in quick succession starting in 1998, many people, including me, were thrilled by the virtuosity with which he delivered his kinky lyrics. Musically trained and influenced by his parents as musicians since early childhood, he combined light-footedness with vocal high spirits. The whole thing had an ironic oomph.
Later he often worked on themes and that’s when the showing off started. Names were constantly being dropped, celebrities were brought in to collaborate and theatrics were misunderstood as a means of demarcation from the mainstream. Being able to do something very well (in his case, singing, playing the piano, composing, reading music) doesn’t always mean that something great will come out of it.
This music is not modern because it is neither new nor irritating
Wainwright’s latest release DREAM REQUIEM is a good example of this. Recently, he really wants to be recognized as an outstanding classical composer, which is why he wrote a requiem with all the twists and turns, inspired by the climate crisis and the corona pandemic. A symphony orchestra, a star soprano (Anna Prohaska) and even Meryl Streep, who speaks intertexts by the poet Lord Byron – everything is arranged.
What we hear is a live recording of this work, which – sorry, 25 years of church choir are speaking here – is stolen from works by Fauré, Saint-Saëns, Orf and Prokofev. And Mozart, of course. The result is a mess of sound and quotes that the choir chases after because too much is happening in too short a time. I’m sure that this is something for ambitious youth orchestras from the Taunus or the Harz, because it’s modern and all, but that’s a misunderstanding. This music is not modern because it is neither new nor irritating.
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