Looking back on a fruitful life

At his retirement home above Lake Constance, Hans Zender looks back on his life and gives an insight into his thinking: an educated and versatile artist who, as a conductor and composer, stimulated German musical life for half a century. His work coincided with the golden age of ARD radio, when contemporary music was given broad scope and corresponding production capacities. Zender made particular use of this during his thirteen years as chief conductor of the Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra (1971-1984). He did this not so much for his own benefit as for that of fellow composers such as Helmut Lachenmann, who speaks at length in this film portrait and attests to Zender's superior art of orchestration among many other things. Zender's creative and post-creative activities stimulated each other. In Gustav Mahler's scores, for example, he knew how to make audible a modernity of sound that is usually drowned out by philharmonic opulence. Although composing was always central to Zender's self-image, for a long time it stood in the shadow of his activities as a conductor. Perhaps not coincidentally, it was only with his arrangement of a classic, Schubert's Winter journeya global success.

The film by Reiner E. Moritz illustrates Zender's work with many concert and rehearsal excerpts, which show a musician who is still a lively and inspiring performer, even at an advanced age. The central theme is formed by Zender's statements from an interview conducted over several days by Max Nyffeler in 2018 with the retiree, who was visibly in poor health. The film has thus become a swan song, not only to a historically unique phase of musical culture, but also to Hans Zender himself, who died on October 23, 2019.

Hans Zender - Thinking with your senses. A film by Reiner E. Moritz. Incl. Debussy's "La Mer", Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Saarbrücken, conducted by Hans Zender, 1975. Arthaus Music DVD, EAN 4058407094388