Rules of Style: Teodor Currentzis

A punk conductor from Greece who promises to ‘save classical music’

A conductor who poses for Vogue; a rebel who challenges Russian government; and a Greek, who believes he ‘will save classical music’. He is a rockstar who chose Beethoven & Mahler to The Beatles or Metallica. His charisma attracts young musicians to travel all across Russia to join his own exclusive orchestra — MusicAeterna.

The classical community hated him for his extravagance, his arrogance and his arduous confidence.

But now, he is too big to ignore. His style too seductive to be dispelled.

I was born in Athens in 1972; my father was a police officer, and my mother taught piano. In our house the piano was kind of part of the family.

In our world everything has a price, but nothing has a value. That includes music.

The musical world doesn’t develop as it could. We ask, for example, where are the soloists that were around in the ’20s and ’30s? The fantastic composers of the 19th century, where are they now? What’s happened to mankind? The truth is they’re all here. But the system is such that they cannot appear.

Music is not a joke, it can transform us, it can teach us to love, forgive, help, show pity and compassion, cherish hope.

I am dedicated to music and always try to achieve what I have in mind, that takes time. For me, music is not simply a way to fill in the empty spaces in my life. The exact opposite is true: my life is at the service of the spaces I create in music.

To feel what I feel when I make music is like cutting your veins everyday, we make music to die for, every concert anew.

When Nazis were capitulating and leaving Leningrad, Russian people put loudspeakers on which played Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony very loudly. In the city, where , in 800 days, more than 600 thousand people died of starvation, its citizens continued to create exceptional music.

Unfortunately in music today there’s no space for orgasm. Beauty scares us.

In Greek we have a wonderful word ‘Charmolypi’ — sad happiness

Russia is the land of contradictions. Here you can be a saint one moment and thief the next.

I will save classical music.