VAN Magazine

VAN
VAN Magazine Logo
Editor in ChiefHartmut Welscher
CategoriesClassical music
FrequencyWeekly
PublisherVAN Verlag GmbH
Founder
  • Ingmar Bornholz
  • Hartmut Welscher
First issue2016
Country
  • Germany
  • United States
Based inBerlin
Language
  • English
  • German
Website

VAN is an online independent magazine devoted to classical music. Published weekly in German and English, it launched in January 2016, styling itself as "a fanzine for music lovers, music professionals and followers of the arts." Its name comes from the surname of Ludwig van Beethoven.

Unlike many other classical music publications, such as Gramophone, Opera News, and Das Opernglas, VAN caters to a younger audience of classical music fans and professionals. Its focus on news and stories that center on non-mainstream voices, perspectives, and stories within classical music has earned it comparisons to Pitchfork.[1]

VAN first received international attention in February, 2016, when its interview with Austrian composer Georg Friedrich Haas was written about in The New York Times.[2] It was the first time that Haas had, in his words, "come out" as the dominant in a BDSM relationship with his wife.[3] The Haas interview was also referenced in a Quartz article on BDSM and creativity.[4] Later that year, New Yorker music critic Alex Ross wrote that the magazine had "rapidly established itself as a venue for unfettered music writing."[5]

Other VAN interviews and reported pieces have informed pieces in the New York Times,[6][7] The Guardian,[8] The Washington Post,[9] Forbes,[10] the New Yorker[11], the Los Angeles Times,[12] the Boston Globe,[13] Slate, and Pitchfork. Several pieces written for VAN are listed as sources in the textbook Classical Concert Studies: A Companion to Contemporary Research and Performance.[14] The popular literary website Longreads cited two of the magazine's essays as explorations that allow readers to "hear the music, and think of [classical music's] culture, differently, too."[15]

In 2018, VAN partnered with music publisher Ricordi for the Ricordilab program for emerging composers, a three-year mentorship and career program.[16] In 2020, VAN announced the inaugural Berlin Prize for Young Artists, a competition for early-career musicians that judged based on both artistic vision/curation and performing talent and technique. The magazine would curate the prize in partnership with Swiss bank Julius Baer.[17] A documentary featuring five of the six finalists, filmed at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, was released in the summer of 2020.[18]

  1. ^ "Listen with Me". Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved 2020-10-21.
  2. ^ Woolfe, Zachary (2016-02-23). "A Composer and His Wife: Creativity Through Kink (Published 2016)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-10-19.
  3. ^ "Decades". VAN Magazine. 2016-02-04. Retrieved 2020-10-19.
  4. ^ MacLellan, Lila. "Kinky sex lifts our consciousness into a heightened state of "flow," according to a new study". Quartz. Retrieved 2020-10-19.
  5. ^ "Music as a weapon". Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise. Retrieved 2020-10-19.
  6. ^ Cooper, Michael (2018-01-19). "Can Classical Music Take a Joke? A Violinist Is Shredded (Published 2018)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-10-19.
  7. ^ Allen, David (2020-03-20). "A Composer Finds the Old in the New". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-10-19.
  8. ^ Cooke, Rachel (2019-06-01). "Mahan Esfahani: 'I wanted to try this harpsichord thing'". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712. Retrieved 2020-10-19.
  9. ^ Midgette, Anne (2017-12-14). "Perspective | Institutions raced to dump James Levine. They should look hard at themselves". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2020-10-19.
  10. ^ Laurson, Jens F. "Trouble In Berlin: Whatever You Do, Don't Make A Shred Video Of Superstar Violinist Daniel Hope". Forbes. Retrieved 2020-10-19.
  11. ^ Robin, William. "What Du Yun's Pulitzer Win Means for Women in Classical Music". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2020-10-19.
  12. ^ "Essential Arts & Culture: MOCA mum on its future, Bowie ballet tribute, Coachella art tower". Los Angeles Times. 2018-04-14. Retrieved 2020-10-19.
  13. ^ Weininger, David (9 January 2020). "Patricia Kopatchinskaja is tired of classical music's 'institutional inertia'". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 2020-10-19.
  14. ^ Tröndle, Martin (2020). Classical Concert Studies: A Companion to Contemporary Research and Performance. Routledge. ISBN 978-1000171709.
  15. ^ "Removing Beethoven's Wig: A Classical Music Reading List". Longreads. 2020-07-15. Retrieved 2020-10-21.
  16. ^ "Ricordi Berlin Continues Composer Competition ricordilab". BroadwayWorld.com (in German). Retrieved 2020-10-19.
  17. ^ "Berlin Prize for Young Artists". Global Foundation for the Performing Arts. Retrieved 2020-10-19.
  18. ^ Hamburg, Radio. "Elbphilharmonie Konzertkino so groß wie noch nie". Radio Hamburg (in German). Retrieved 2020-10-19.