Landsberg - The “final chord” should actually have been given in May 2020 - to say goodbye to a festival that has been integrated into Landsberg's cultural life since 2008. After six festivals there will be no more “Fascination Guitar”. When we said goodbye, it was a good year later. Corona sparked in between. Last weekend, “Festival head” Christian Gruber presented a brilliant final concert - together with his long-time partner Peter Maklar in the duo “Gruber & Maklar” and the solo guitarist Paolo Devecchi. Gruber's daughter Katharina took over the last appearance and with it the “final-final chord”, who performed jazz standards together with the jazz guitarist Philipp Stauber.
Landsberg - The “final chord” should actually have been given in May 2020 - to say goodbye to a festival that has been integrated into Landsberg's cultural life since 2008. After six festivals there will be no more “Fascination Guitar”. When we said goodbye, it was a good year later. Corona sparked in between. Last weekend, “Festival head” Christian Gruber presented a brilliant final concert - together with his long-time partner Peter Maklar in the duo “Gruber & Maklar” and the solo guitarist Paolo Devecchi. Gruber's daughter Katharina took over the last appearance and with it the “final-final chord”, who performed jazz standards together with the jazz guitarist Philipp Stauber.
For ten years there was “a fascination with the guitar in Landsberg”, explains its “inventor” and artistic director Christian Gruber in his address to the audience. It was always a meeting place between artists, course participants, lecturers and exhibitors. After the last festival in 2018, he and his wife decided to quit. The energy just wasn't enough. Organizing a festival like this is an enormous effort, says Gruber. However, they did not want to disappear without singing and sounding, but with a “small but fine final chord”, a farewell festival that was originally planned as a “walk-through concert” between different venues last year. The flyers were already printed. It turned out differently.
“Actually, this year it should rather be a final award”, says Franz Xaver Rößle, founder and chairman of the sponsoring association that was set up especially for the festival, which will also be disbanded due to the lack of the association's purpose. And with this "trivialization" referred to the frame and size of the closing festival: smaller than originally planned - fewer guests, reduced audience. Corona is not over yet.
However, there could be no question of “accords”. More of a flood of chords that Gruber & Maklar whirled towards the audience - fast, easy, virtuoso and extremely dexterous. As in the Spanish-Impressionist pieces, where you could almost feel yourself on the streets of Cordoba or feel the “ritual fire dance of a ghost-possessed gypsy”, for example in Manuel de Falla's “Danza ritual del fuego”. Or in the quieter performances, full of poetry and expressiveness. You can feel that the two have been making music together for decades. They are well-rehearsed. When one person has to tune his guitar, the other waits - one glance is enough.
It was a little quieter, a little more jazzy with the guest from Italy, Paolo Devecchi, whom the guitar duo met during a concert tour in 1998: "He enchanted us immediately," said Gruber. Devecchi has made a name for himself beyond the borders of his own country with his multi-faceted own compositions and arrangements - hardly recognizable, but beautiful, for example, “Azzuro” by Paolo Conte.
After a lot of melancholy it was at the end: “Let's dance the samba”: After the “Samba Classico” by Heitor Villa-Lobos, Gruber & Maklar switched to “Balkan Jazz”, the “Byzantine theme with variations” by Dusan Bogdanovic Finally to end the evening together with the Italian guest (and Edvard Grieg).
From the only half-filled ballroom of the historic town hall - the requirement was: distance, but without a mask - everyone clapped for two.
Consolation: Of course, things will continue with the duo Gruber & Maklar.
"After more than 30 years of working together, we have no intention of breaking up," says Christian Gruber.
Nevertheless, there is now space for new things again.
There are enough ideas.
Cooperations, partnerships, with artists or other instruments.
He would like the harp or cello, says Gruber.
"Everything in life has its time."