Prelude to the Young Euro Classic

 

The Young Philharmonic Orchestra Jerusalem Weimar to open 2015 youth orchestra festival.

 

“Yes, now you’ve got it.” Michael Sanderling leans back contentedly after the last notes have died away. The orchestra sitting in front of the principal conductor at the Dresden Philharmonic is an unusual one – 70 music students from Jerusalem and Weimar who have come together for one season as the “Young Philharmonic Orchestra Jerusalem Weimar”. They only have seven rehearsal days to polish their concert programme and to become attuned to one another. Indeed, these students from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance and the University of Music Franz Liszt Weimar are playing together for the first time. It is not long until 6 August, when they will be performing the opening concert at the Young Euro Classic youth orchestra festival in the time-honoured Konzerthaus Berlin, a concert that will be broadcast throughout Germany.

This morning it is Dmitri Shostakovich’s difficult Cello Concert No. 1 that they are honing. Sanderling interrupts them repeatedly, explains and sings to them just how he sees certain passages; he has “bad news for the violins” and can hear perfectly how “somebody came in too early”. Both his praise and his criticism of the students are expressed in soft yet firm sentences. The students listen attentively, scribble notes onto their scores in pencil and discuss in whispers how to implement what their conductor wants. Otherwise, silent concentration is the order of the day and it is only during the break that laughter and conversations are to be heard.

 

For violist Lucas Freund from Weimar this is his first time in the orchestra. The 25-year-old finds it fascinating that the musicians from different cultures who have come together here have a great deal in common. “We speak the same language – music – and have the same goal, the same scores.” And what he particularly likes is the fact that nobody has any reservations about getting involved. And that is one of the objectives of the Young Philharmonic Orchestra Jerusalem Weimar – to bring the young people of Israel and Germany together, with music as a way of overcoming obstacles and building bridges.

 

This temporary orchestra, which is formed at two-year intervals and is now meeting up for the third time, has a very special symbolic significance in 2015. “It would be difficult for me to imagine a more fitting gift to mark this 50th anniversary”, muses Federal Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier in the orchestra’s programme, referring to the establishment of diplomatic ties between Germany and Israel in 1965. It goes without saying that the past has not been forgotten by these young musicians, people like Lucas Freund, particularly since they will be visiting the former concentration camp at Buchenwald. But they do not see it placing a strain on their relationships, as Freund remarks, adding that the same applies to the desire for them to be an orchestra of reconciliation: “We talk about everything, it is a spur-of-the-moment situation.”

The orchestra gave its first concert in Weimar on 2 August and then moved on to Berlin – at the Young Euro Classic – to Chorin and to Wolfsburg. Then, in October, the young musicians will be playing in Israel – in Rishon LeZion, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Sanderling was instrumental in choosing the works to be performed, including Kurt Weill’s Symphony No. 2: “He had to flee Germany whilst he was writing it.” And, as Sanderling puts it, what Shostakovich “had to suffer from was more than merely what the Germans were responsible for”. There will also be the premiere of a work by an Israeli composer, Ziv Cojocaru. In “Links. Metamorphosis” the latter composer’s aim is to provide a musical interpretation of the interactions between people, groups, cultures and the links between them. And the last item on the programme is Pjotr Tchaikovsky’s “Overture-Fantasy Romeo and Juliet”, a real “blockbuster for the audience” (Sanderling).

 

This work is also scheduled for rehearsal this morning. And they play this one through without interruption. As Sanderling sees it, here, many things are already working. But then comes the fine-tuning for the music students. For one 24-year-old, Nina Loeterman from Jerusalem, rehearsing with the conductor is “wonderful, I learn such a lot”. The violist finds that working in the orchestra here is “more professional and the atmosphere is more serious” than at home in Jerusalem. She too thinks that this coming together of two cultures which “need to coordinate with one another” is interesting. In Germany for the first time, when she is not rehearsing she explores the city of Weimar (“very romantic”), attends concerts given by other musicians or just goes for a stroll.

After initial reservations the students also get together outside the context of music. Flautist Anat Nazarathy comments: “For the first two days there was one Israeli group and another German one. But now the two have mingled – and, after all, we will be seeing one another again in Israel.” Nazarathy is also full of enthusiasm for the conductor: “He is able to explain exactly what he wants and how to achieve it; he knows what he’s talking about.” Sanderling himself, who is now conducting the German-Israeli orchestra for the second time, notices a very different change: “Two years ago, doing something like this caused much more of a stir.”