At the end of next month, one of the people who does not appear on stage during the concerts, but who is nevertheless indispensable to the performance of the ensembles, will retire. His name is Ivar Munk, his title is choir producer.
He started as a singer assistant in the Danish Radio Choir in 1970, so in the 47 years he has worked for DR's choirs and orchestras - with a detour as director of the Nederlands Kammerkor in Amsterdam - he has seen many things. Nevertheless, he was shaken up when the Minister of Culture and the Danish People's Party presented their political proposals for the future of the choirs outside DR, among other things.
- It's shocking that anyone can think that you can just go from the Vocal Ensemble to the Opera or the Royal Theatre and vice versa. In the DR ensemble, there are maybe two people who have tried operas at an artistic level. The rest have not," says Ivar Munk and adds that there are many fine solo performances among the singers, for example in churches, but singing in an opera performance is something else.
And while art is the most important thing, there are practical differences between DR's operations and the theatre's way of working.
The VocalEnsemble participates in around 35 productions organised by DR. In the concert hall, on TV, on the radio and regularly around the country. The Opera probably does 6-8 productions a year with choirs. The large choir, DRKoncertKoret, has 200 hours of service a year and participates in 12-15 productions. If they were to perform in Wagner's Lohengrin, for example, half of their annual service time would be spent on this one task. At the Opera there are three weeks of rehearsals for a production, preceded by an equal amount of rehearsal time. This is followed by many performances, in the case of Lohengrin, lasting 5 hours.
When Ivar Munk started, none of the singers at DR had full working hours. From his time with the Dutch Chamber Choir, it is also his experience that the best singers found a lower percentage of fixed working hours attractive because they preferred to have other performances on the side, not least as soloists. For many years, the remuneration of singers at Danmarks Radio was a complicated system where 50 per cent of the fee was added if the concert was rebroadcast, 33 per cent if the rebroadcast took place shortly after the actual performance. There was also a pay race between Danmarks Radio and the Royal Theatre, but all of this has been replaced by modern agreements that are adapted to the ensembles' use on all DR's platforms.
Like so many others in the industry, Ivar Munk entered the world of music via Sankt Annæ Gymnasium. He originally had a dream of becoming a conductor and studied both music at university and singing at the conservatory. He gave up his dream of conducting in favour of a career backstage.
During his tenure, the permanent choir, which is now called the VocalEnsemble, has been reduced in number from 31 a dozen years ago to 18 members, but he does not see this as an artistic loss, as the current ensemble size is appropriate for a number of works and allows for great flexibility in the interaction with DR KoncertKoret.
During his time at Radiohuset and DR-Byen, Ivar Munk has encountered many personalities on the conductor's podium. One of the first was Svend S. Schultz, who he has a lot of nice things to say about, though not that he was a great conductor. But he had his strong opinions. One example was the rehearsal of Stravinsky's ”Symphony of Psalms”, which starts very softly in many interpretations, but which according to Schultz, who had met Stravinsky in Copenhagen, should sound like braying Moroccan donkeys. According to the Danish composer, Baroque music should be sung fast, thin and dry.
Sergiu Celibidache was another great musical personality on the podium as a celebrated guest conductor for the Radio Symphony Orchestra. As a music student at the university, Ivar Munk was one of the many young students who followed his rehearsal programme with great attention. Students then and now could do the same. Strong personalities are not necessarily long-lasting when it comes to co-operation, and the fiery Romanian did not have a long marriage with Danish Radio. He was able to harass some of the musicians who were high up in the hierarchy, while he found favour with others a little further down the hierarchy.
After his last concert in Denmark, Ivar Munk asked him if he wanted to do a pure a cappella concert with the Radio Choir, which he did well with, and Celibidache agreed. He suggested a repertoire consisting of ”Zuerst eine Messe von Josquin (16th century), dann einige Motetten von Monteverdi, und zuletzt etwas Modernes - von Mozart”.
Ivar Munk is also extremely enthusiastic about the DR Symphony Orchestra's current chief conductor, Fabio Luisi, and impressed that such a big name can be lured to Denmark. As producer of the choirs, he is delighted with Luisi's obvious love of choral conducting - a love he attributes to Italian Luisi. Ivar Munk especially respects Luisi's completely elaborate yet exuberant concerts.
- The worst thing any musician can imagine is a conductor who talks too much. The Vocal Ensemble's chief conductor for the past few years, Marcus Creed, doesn't say much, but is extremely meticulous. He is fantastic, glances at the singers if something is wrong so they are not in doubt, and he doesn't stop until intonation and structure are in balance. Today, the VocalEnsemble can compete with the most recognised ensembles in Europe," Ivar Munk concludes.
It is against this background that he is shocked by the idea of placing DR's choir under the Royal Danish Theatre. ”Opera is a completely independent and radically different discipline. Comparing it to vocal chamber music is like saying that a surgeon and a psychiatrist can just swap jobs, as they both started the same programme.”