You’re either a classical musician or a jazzman, a chanson singer or a pop singer or an opera conductor or… there are always certain boxes, certain pigeonholes, and crossing the boundaries between them is still considered an absolute taboo, not only musically but socially.
Gulda was one of the few artists to cross these boundaries. He should be considered a model for 21th century musicians. His life was a merciless fight against musical snobbery. It is a shame, considering the beauty and profundity of classical music, that it is performed mostly by dull, narrow-minded people for conservatives who don’t get the music at all but attend the concerts merely for reasons of social reputation or out of pure intellectual nosiness. Thus, the reminder of classical music gets dragged through the mire and if nobody actually stands up and puts something against it – like Gulda – maybe in some years nobody will listen to Bach and Beethoven anymore.
You’ll find the other parts of this documentary on YouTube – just click on the video above.
