Open for new things

Those of us who are a little older might remember this all too well: "Der Wolf … das Lamm … auf der grünen Wiese. Das Lamm schreit… Hurz!" ("The wolf … the lamb … in the green meadow. The lamb cries … Hurz!"). Even a lurch and a hawk appear in this piece of musical "art".

We're not talking about Brehm's animal life here, of course, but about the now long legendary appearance of the German comedian Hape Kerkeling, who – dressed in a tailcoat, with a glued-on beard and accompanied by a pianist – delivered a parody of contemporary music at the beginning of the 1990s that has since shaped the image of this music, which unfortunately still has a reputation for being elitist and unlistenable, for many and many a person.

The fact that "Hurz!" was even released as a single at the time and achieved sales figures that most contemporary musicians can probably only dream of, doesn't make things any better. In any case, the cliché of music being played by the most serious of performers and only open to a few specialists has persisted to this day – wrongly, as regular concertgoers must realise.