For a long time it was in the stars whether the new edition of the music series "Saitenstraßen" could take place in the Upper Isar Valley.
The organizers clearly said yes and dared an experiment that was implemented with a lot of technology and vigor.
Wallgau
- The Lord of the Pictures does not wear lederhosen and also not a smart traditional shirt.
In the case of Martin Schulze, the man responsible for the image editing, it wouldn't be worth it at all.
Where and above all how should he get the sweaty part clean again?
For days, Uffinger has lived in a converted director's bus in parking lots somewhere between Mittenwald and Wallgau.
His goal for the day is the shower in the evening, and that is hard work.
Sometimes he doesn't fall asleep until 3 a.m., sometimes later.
On the night of Sunday, his men from TC-Showtechnik rushed through the Upper Isar Valley at 4 a.m.
He calls them the "Hau-Drauf-Crew" and points at his biceps while he explains what they are doing.
“They have it here,” he says, in the upper arm.
Without the men for the rough, not a single picture, not a sound slips from the Wallgau guest house into the living rooms of this world.
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Man at the microphone: Carsten Gerhard
© ANDREAS MAYR
Of course, the technicians have no idea about all the scenes that take place at home.
But Anton Sprenger likes to take you with him.
His daughter, Elisabeth, put on her dirndl on Saturday evening, brought in a bunch of beer and invited a few friends.
Together they sat in front of the television screen, clicked into the live stream from the Mittenwald TSV hall and saw how the Auryn quartet mixes classic sounds with Stubn music.
“They made an event out of it,” says the Wallgauer.
So the young women.
Anton Sprenger also radioed his acquaintances in America, whom he met two years ago at the "Saitenstraßen".
Unique types like Michael Sharkey-Schneider, the Bavarian American with the Gamsbart who would like to move from New York to the Upper Isar Valley.
Brutal experience
Basically, Sprenger and his wife Regina can only think of one word that does justice to the mood of the first edition of the Music Weekend 2019: “Crazy.” Even if they tried - they could hardly forget the people and moments from back then. How they jerked in the bus through the Isar valley, a few musicians suddenly blew their instruments and the whole bus started up. “The most brutal experience.” Or how some unknown group unpacked the hits from the 1950s at night. Many in Wallgau, Krün and Mittenwald have stories like this to tell. At the moment even better, because they bring one closer to the ideal world that once existed.
But now it is Corona - or shall we say: possibly the last outflows of the pandemic.
Nobody sings on the bus this year.
They even had to say to the musicians who wanted to sit comfortably together after their performance: “Manda, it's okay.
Not this time."
If the world cannot come to us, then we just go out into the world.
Carsten Gerhard
Can a festival that lives from closeness and crampedness, from people and crowds, from beer and brass music, even work?
So digital and distant?
These questions are best asked to the architect of the atmosphere, Carsten Gerhard, artistic director of the "Saitenstraßen".
The doctor of musicology is a happy person who likes to laugh and says sentences like: "If the world can't come to us, then we'll just go out into the world."
The 2021 edition should not be a copy because you cannot copy what happens in the streets, alleys and squares. Rather, it's about a little bit of freedom, a little bit of peace, a little bit of joy. “Finally we can make music together again” - this is the message that pictures are supposed to convey out of Wallgau on Sunday evening.
What happens in front of the many cameras has nothing in common with “this classic festival character” that Mayor Bastian Eiter missed so much.
Basically, a studio has been set up in each location and three television programs have been produced, explains Carsten Gerhard.
However, no ZDF television garden, "we never wanted to go there," emphasizes Martin Schulze.
“We're not at the BR, where they rehearse for a week.” In Wallgau there is also a musician where he shouldn't be.
It's real, but also “a great game of poker”, as Uffinger says.
Each evening they see the groups for the first time.
After ten minutes of broadcasting, you have a sense of whether it will be something today or not.
40 musicians in the ballroom
The evening starts with Korbinian Sprenger.
In Mardi Gras he once mimed Hansi Hinterseer.
They found the performance in the Upper Isar Valley quite funny.
But being a moderator at a concert of this size is another dimension.
“He's never done that before,” says his father Anton, the master violin maker with stage experience.
Korbinian Sprenger's job is to stage the six music groups.
You should be able to see who the men and women are who are blowing into a clarinet when you can see them chasing across the plasma screen in pixel form.
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Martin Schulze (left), the technical director, and Christian Kraus (assistant director) have everything under control in the outside broadcast van.
© ANDREAS MAYR
Around 40 musicians have been accommodated in the hall.
“They want to show the diversity of the Upper Isar Valley, explains Jürgen Wild, who is responsible for media work.
That was not an easy task, because they had to reduce significantly, from over 400 two years ago to around 110. The guests from Seville and Flamenco and from Hungary also unloaded them again.
Nevertheless, the sound of the Alps shimmered through the hall.
Once again the joy of life after a time in which it was always about life, but no longer about joy.
This feeling manifests itself in small details.
For Anton Sprenger it is the traditional costume that he put on for the first time this year.
