VAN Magazine

Home
VAN Magazine

VAN is an independent online classical music magazine published weekly in English and German. We love strong personalities and radical points of view.

03/07/2025

In today's issue ✍️

In December 2024, VAN obtained a tranche of documents relating to the Komische Oper. Today, we publish the months-long investigation by Hartmut Welscher and Merle Krafeld into the use and alleged misuse of public funds by the house.

Komische Oper is one of the most successful German-speaking opera houses of recent times, with Barrie Kosky’s decade-long artistic leadership resulting in a sharply defined artistic profile. Obviously, this status has something to do with its finances; along with the Staatsoper Berlin and Deutsche Oper, Komische Oper is the third Berlin opera house to receive generous public funding.

This financial situation has been questioned of late, as Berlin’s Senate announced large cuts to the culture sector in their 2025 budget. This included the Komische Oper. “The struggle must continue for every euro and every future year of construction,” the house’s co-artistic directors Philip Bröking and Susanne Moser wrote in their introductory brochure this year.

But today’s report shows its leadership racking up bills on unexplained consultants, extensive travel, costly renovations to the Schiller Theater, and the perplexing case of an unregistered, unused advertising bus that has since disappeared. (The piece also includes an appearance by VAN’s favorite German media lawyer, Dr. Christian Schertz.)

Read on below...

Unexplainable consultants, contraband renovations, and a disappearing bus: inside the finances of Berlin's most successful house

30/06/2025

New in VAN

• Tatsiana Khomich, sister of the imprisoned Belarusian activist and flutist Maria Kalesnikava, on the diplomacy that may allow her to finally come free
• Sitarist and composer Jasdeep Singh Degun on his new work, "Into the Night"
• Jacob Kirkegaard on recording swimming baths in Chernobyl, and his new work for Momentum Biennale in Norway

The recent release of political prisoners in Belarus became possible thanks to the consistent and targeted efforts of the United States. These efforts began a year ago under the Biden administration and yielded their first results in February 2025 with the release of both U.S. and Belarusian citizen...

09/06/2025

In the latest edition of VAN, Michael Barenboim on his pro-Palestinian activism, Hugh Morris on Kings Place and the Lockheed Martin-backed Defence in Space Conference, Marat Ingeldeev goes to Musik Installationen Nürnberg, and much more!

Subscribe at van-magazine.com

The violinist says that "this is the crime of a generation." He speaks to Jeffrey Arlo Brown about the current situation.

29/05/2025

There's only one article in this week's issue of VAN, but it's a big one: Kate Wagner writes a guide to the full "Ring" cycle. Strap in!

Kate Wagner's radical reinterpretation of Richard Wagner's "Ring" cycle from the political left.

22/05/2025

VAN? Again? You lucky things.

Here's edition #404, featuring...

💉 Kazuki Yamada on Berlin, Birmingham, bins, and blood
💉 Is Unsuk Chin's new opera fully finished?
💉 The "method acting" of musical interpretation, with pianist Alfonso Gómez

All this and more in inboxes now 📧

An interview with Kazuki Yamada, the incoming conductor of the DSO Berlin

15/05/2025

VAN! Again!

🍂 Bernardino Molinari, the "Four Seasons" pioneer linked to fascism, who later became music director of the Palestine Symphony
🍂 Catherine Lamb on unfoldings, resistance, and Gaza
🍂 Lukáš Vondráček, a pianist full of stories
🍂 Automated church music? Kathleen Kelly explores the new world of organ on demand.

All this and more 📧

A world of independent classical music journalism at your fingertips. Over 500 articles, with new ones every week.

08/05/2025

White smoke! Conclave over! A new VAN is here!

💨 Is Europe experiencing "Ring" fatigue?
💨 100 tubas at Long Play Festival
💨 Can a real scene compete with an idealized screen?
💨 Austin Wulliman’s string quartet creations
💨 Leah Mandel at the Frick reopening

Subscribe at van-magazine.com

A.J. Goldmann reflects on the many new and continuing stagings of Wagner's "Ring" cycle on the stages of Europe.

01/05/2025

VAN 401:

🎭 Komische Oper's "Don Giovanni," reviewed by Jeff Brown and Hugh Morris

🎭 “Scratching,” cellist Katinka Kleijn’s one-woman performance piece, reviewed by Hannah Edgar and Julia Conrad

🎭 Ben Poore on "Quartet for the End of Time"

Don Giovanni is bi? Don Elvira is actually a male soprano? There's a whole chunk of the Mozart Requiem? Jeffrey Arlo Brown and Hugh Morris converse on Kirill Serebrennikov's new production.

24/04/2025

VAN's 400th edition 🍾

🍾 András Schiff on why he is boycotting the United States
🍾 “Daphnis and Chloe” at the Southbank Centre’s Multitudes Festival, reviewed in the bar
🍾 Salzburg Easter Festival through the interregnum years
🍾 After Peter Ablinger

The pianist. on Jewish identity, performing in Israel, and self-criticism.

17/04/2025

Introducing VAN #399

💋 The Köln Concert, at 50
💋 Chaya Czernowin's untouchable music
💋 Listening for the body of Julius Eastman
💋 Conductor Aurel Dawidiuk on music, growing up and loss

van-magazine.com

The audacious delirious dance receives its flowers in its golden year.

07/04/2025

In VAN this week:

History is fiction—places, stories, storytelling, characters—and, for this edition of VAN, we hear from both sides of the equation: the colorful characters, and those grappling with their stories.

♾ We lead with Perri di Christina, who dons her furs and heads to the Met to profile James Smidt, aka opera queen and Instagram persona/provocateur , whose shock-jock posting and dedication to a niche school of opera aesthetics has brought him notoriety. (Who is he?, many people ask.) Then, Anna Schors speaks to Joan La Barbara, a legendary shapeshifter in the new music space, capable of handbrake turns of character.

♾ On the other side of the equation, Kate Molleson speaks to Hugh Morris the joy of grappling with the many complex stories of the 20th century ahead of a new Radio 3 series, “20th Century Radicals.” Finally, Shannon Draucker interviews Kevin Slocumb, a market-leader in the genre of classical music mystery fiction, about his new book The Dark Maestro, and subtly subverting power structures through his whodunnits.

♾ All this and more within the magazine—join us ♾

Perri di Christina searches for the person behind the voice-teacher-cum-shock-jock Haus of Shmizzay.

19/03/2025

"[In 2020], I told my American agent, 'If Donald Trump gets re-elected, I’m not going to the U.S. anymore.' That didn’t happen, thank God, but it might now. I can’t accept such things: Donald Trump is a step too far."

This was András Schiff, speaking to VAN in September 2023. Now, the pianist has withdrawn from all engagements in the U.S. for the 2025-26 season.

"Arts and politics, arts and society are inseparable," Schiff writes in a statement via his management. "Therefore, as artists, we must react to the horrors and injustices of this world. Have we learned nothing from the course of history -- as recently as Europe in the 1930s? Perhaps not."

Listening to classical music can occasionally give you the kind of blow on the head that the hero of Mark Twain’s novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court receives: all of a sudden you’re in a different time and place. Thanks to our very own HIPsters, it’s possible to hear music jus...

Address

Website

https://www.van-magazine.com/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when VAN Magazine posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to VAN Magazine:

Shortcuts

Address
Alerts
Contact The Business
Claim ownership or report listing
Want your business to be the top-listed Media Company?

Country:

City: