Björn Wiman: 2019 will be the year when universalgenierna shows the way to the future

the Year's most unforgettable musical experiences? For my part, it occurred during the nobel prize concert in Stockholm for almost a month ago. The soloist Lisa Batiashvili had played the Tchaikovsky violin concerto, as befits a young master: masterful, powerful, and with the huge swings in temperament. It was grandiose and impressive – but also completely in harmony with our boisterous, strident and self-satisfied time.

It was after applådåskorna which it occurred. With violin in hand any Batiashvili an encore of ”the whole of mankind's most important composers”. Then she played Johann Sebastian Bach's serene chorale ”Ich ruf’ zu dir, Herr Jesus Christ,” in arrangement for violin and orchestra by the Swedish composer Anders Hillborg. I sat there dumbfounded afterwards. In contrast to the previous storm, this was a low-key but sweet cry for help – a prayer about a different world than the one we have around us must be possible.

I hear the music again. New year's eve is the one day of the year which, more than any other is about both the history and the future – in the same way as Lisa Batiashvili and Anders Hillborg have taken Bach's 300 year old music and made it into a picture of a possible future.

We know what the opposite is. 2018 was a year that held madness in great quantities, with cant right-wing extremist political tribalisering and contempt for reason, science and common human decency. It was a year when the thresholds for what they thought was possible, moved even a step and a year – to borrow an expression from the 1930s by the German writer Sebastian Haffner – which the gloomy present was mitigated only by the prospect of a horrific future.

It is as if a voice comes in from above and interrupts the galloping madness: ’Stop! This is what we are doing is intolerable! We can't have it like this anymore!’

all The more important, therefore, to keep the hard points of attachment from the past. On may 2, 2019, it has been 500 years since Leonardo da Vinci died – one of them which shows that the best with the future is in the history. The dawn of perhaps the greatest polymath will attract the attention of one of them, which showed that man can have large and unexpected leap in their thinking ability and self-understanding. Just as Bach a beacon for all times.

Over the past year, would one of Leonardo da Vinci's most famous paintings have been shown at the Louvre new museifilial in the arab oljeemiratet Abu Dhabi. The work, whose authenticity and origin has been questioned, depicting Jesus in the renässansdräkt who gives a blessing with his right hand and holds a glass sphere in the left. It is also the most expensive painting ever sold – it was then auctioned for 4.1 billion in 2017, according to the task to a prince connected with the documented rogue saudi royal family. So can also a set the display to be an installation in itself.

Read more: Leonardo's ”Salvator mundi,” can be displayed at the Louvre Abu Dhabi

by the title of Leonardo's painting: ”Salvator mundi” – saviour of the world. Is there such still? Maybe anyway. In musikdokumentären ”Bach – a passionate life” tells the british dirigentnestorn John Eliot Gardiner on the gifted moment of redemption shows itself in the German master's music. It is at the point in the ”German” where the choir in violent anger and discord rages against Jesus and then in just a moment is turning into a sculptural eftersinnande chorale.

This sudden breach in the music, according to Gardiner, an outstanding illustration of humanity's potential. It is as if a voice comes in from above and interrupts the galloping madness of: ”Stop! This is what we are doing is intolerable! We can't have it like this anymore!” After a moment's silence, turning then and the singers, 180 degrees and become the opposite of what they recently have been: from a cant, ruthless Twittermobb turn into a repentant and tender-hearted collaborative collective.

Dare to believe a similar miracle in reality in 2019? What we do know is that man is capable of both raging fury, and compassionate humanism. But also that she, when the need is greatest, is capable to both choose the right thing and to do it quickly.

Happy new year!

Read more chronicles of Björn Wiman here . For example, this: ”Only through space, one can see clearly at life on earth”.