At the Frankfurt Music Fair, the magazine "Musikforum" and the "Neue Musikzeitung" awarded Harald Augter, Chairman of the SWR Broadcasting Council, the unflattering "Music Gordi" for the merger of the two orchestras, the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Baden-Baden/Freiburg Symphony Orchestra.
The press release from the German Music Council quotes Christian Höppner, editor-in-chief of Musikforum and president of the German Cultural Council. According to Höppner, the decision of the Broadcasting Council to merge the two SWR orchestras is a socio-political scandal.
The "destruction of structures that have grown over decades and the high-quality cultural and educational offerings of an entire region" is unprecedented in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. As Chairman of the SWR Broadcasting Council, Augter was largely responsible for the merger of the two orchestras.
However, the "Musik-Gordi", a knotted recorder, is not in line with other so-called negative prizes, but is "to be understood as a call to action to cut the Gordian knot".
