Kempten - The highlight of the Classix Festival so far is the Wednesday concert: three chamber music works that follow each other in a harmonious way.
In order to show the history of tones, it takes the wanderer between the ages. Dorothee Oberlinger is such a wanderer who, with great virtuosity and a large number of recorders, lets the magic of old music revive. This magic unfolded on Kempten's city theater stage on Monday through the appearance of the Sonatori de la Gioiosa Marca, an Italian chamber ensemble from Treviso that specializes in early music and provided the authentic musical background to Oberlinger's nimble flute lines. Old instruments such as vielle, hurdy-gurdy, theorbo and baroque guitar contributed a particular charm.
After a strong start to the festival on the weekend, which can also be counted on Monday evening, Tuesday was a rather colorful evening with a wide variety of chamber music works. In addition to a well-known jewel such as Mozart's clarinet quintet KV 581, more unknown and rarely heard works such as Camille Saint-Saens 'septet for trumpet, string quintet and piano or Jean Francaix' divertissement could be discovered. It got entertaining with Bohuslav Martinus' La Revue de Cuisine and Thomas Gansch's Quartet for trumpet, violin, clarinet and piano.
In the latter, the composer himself played the trumpet; the work lived from the unusual composition of the quartet with the instruments trumpet, violin, clarinet and piano. Thomas Gansch was a long-time member of the Vienna Art Orchestra, which has since been dissolved, one of the most innovative and successful ensembles for jazz and modern music in Europe over the past 30 years, and this piece also breathed a touch of the musical openness and creativity celebrated there. La Revue de Cuisine by the Czech Martinus, on the other hand, is entertaining ballet music from 1927 with distinctive melodies and rhythms and quotations from famous works of that time.
The highlight of the festival so far has been the Wednesday concert: three chamber music works that followed each other in a coherent order over the course of the evening.
It only took three musicians, one of whom, interestingly, had to step in as a replacement for another who was sick.
This in no way detracted from the quality of the performance, on the contrary, Esther Hoppe on the violin, Markus Schirmer on the piano and Danjulo Ishizaka on the cello developed from the very first piece - Schubert's Piano Trio in E flat major - a dreamlike security and coordination in the interplay .
The dynamic range was enormous, but always well coordinated between the musicians.
Piano and string instruments, that these quite different types of sound come together, is not a sure-fire success.
A great listening experience, how Schirmer always found the right note and touch on the piano to get to the point with the string instruments.
That was the perfect way to take Schubert's monumental work, which expands the whole cosmos of Schubert's work.
After a short break, Honegger's Sonatina for violin and cello continued quietly and intimately - what a contrast to Schubert's great work!
Hoppe and Ishizaka played as if they had always played together and turned Honegger's four-movement work into a neoclassical bravura piece.
Musical roller coaster ride fed by the experiences of the Second World War
The last work of the evening, Dimitri Shostakovich's second piano trio from 1944, is an ingenious musical roller coaster ride of suffering and tormented emotions and moods that haunted the composer from the experiences of the Second World War.
It contains all the hallmarks of the composer at the height of his creative power: lyrical melodies that are underpinned by bitter harmonies, sudden contrasts in tempo and intensity, sparing textures, which then openly flow into romantic passages and powerful climaxes.
The three musicians got everything out of this piece that is included and added what makes a live concert unique and special.
Chamber music at it's best!
