Why culture is so important now
Plays, concerts, readings: cultural life has also been forced to take a break in order to slow the spread of the virus. But many artists are finding creative, mostly digital ways of making their art audible and visible. Commentators applaud their efforts.
A global chorus of the confined
From Italians singing from their balconies to online concerts, the importance of music in this crisis is immense, The Guardian notes:
“It is almost as though music has suddenly become the expression of the way we wish the world was, even while the lockdowns are the embodiment of the world as, for the present, it actually is. ... In music, supply has been quick to respond to demand. The Berlin-based concert pianist Igor Levit plays a sonata live on Twitter each evening from his living room. ... Meanwhile many opera houses and orchestras have responded to shutdowns by putting their performance archives online for free. ... It sends a memo to the future. Music education should be a core task in schools, when they reopen. We need music more than ever at present.”
Art must and will survive
NRC Handelsblad is impressed by the fact that artists are taking the initiative and finding alternative way to perform:
“It is a source of hope that the sector itself is proving resilient. Musicians are turning their living rooms into studios and recording concerts there. This is chamber music in the true sense of the word - and we get to enjoy it. ... In the future, these impulses could decide between survival and perdition in a sector that - one tends to forget - was already under severe pressure in life before corona. Under home quarantine we are compelled to return once more to books, CDs, series and films and feel the need for art and culture directly.”