Half a century of Stadtkapelle Germering - if that's no reason to let it rip musically.
And so the anniversary concert in the Orlando Hall of the city hall turned into a glamorous music event and a bow to great composers and musicians.
Germering
- The program only contained names that were also associated with round numbers this year.
Franz Liszt would have celebrated his 210th birthday, Gustav Mahler his 110th, Camille Saint-Saens and Astor Piazolla their 100th each. Mozart had his 230th anniversary of death, Louis Armstrong his 50th and 120th birthday.
Pop giants Phil Collins and Sting both turned 70 this year.
What a great mixture, one was already pleased when reading the program - and was not disappointed in the one and a half hours of the concert.
Conductor in quarantine
Liszt's Hungarian Storm March got off to a jagged start, but who actually marched onto the conductor's desk? The eagerly awaited new conductor Matthias Zippel was not. He had recently been sent to corona quarantine as the contact person for an infected person. Vice-conductor Harald Stößner had to take over and led the city band in a good mood and increasingly self-consciously through the demanding pieces, including the “Danse Bacchanale” from the opera “Samson and Delila”, Mozart's “Turkish March”, Piazolla's “Libertango” and a Phil Collins Medley.
A special treat turned out to be “The Titan” from Gustav Mahler's 1st Symphony, an adaptation of the folk song canon “Brother Jakob” alienated to a funeral march - despite the minor key and a certain tonal gloom, great listening pleasure.
With Sting's “Englishman in New York” and a medley of Louis Armstrong hits, the hour struck for some outstanding soloists, including Bernhard Götz (clarinet) and Robert Baumgartner (trumpet).
Offspring problems
In view of the musical quality and passion of the members, Mayor Andreas Haas was convinced in his greeting that the city band will also celebrate its 100th birthday. However, there is one problem - there is a lack of offspring. The town band has not had its own youth orchestra for a number of years. "Unfortunately, even a collaboration with a music school and friendly associations has not yet led to success," says the anniversary program. "Young people and children who want to learn a wind instrument and play in an orchestra are rare."
To make matters worse, the symphonic wind orchestra is a strong second musical force in the same genre.
But nobody wanted to worry about the future on the anniversary evening, especially since they would certainly be unfounded in the medium term - in the ranks of the musicians you saw many young and young-at-heart faces.
That’s how it all started
Reinhard Hofmann is the only one who was already there when the town band was founded in 1971 as the “Unterpfaffenhofen-Germering Music Train”.
It was also he who laid the foundations for the first repertoire of the marching band of that time.
In 1970 Hofmann used the cassette recorder to record the music that was played during the great Rose Monday parades in the Rhineland in front of the television, and transcribed it into sheet music.
In the beginning the band played up to 50 times a year.
But quality is more important than quantity anyway.
If the performances are to become such musical festive menus as the anniversary concert was, it takes a lot of preparation and rehearsal time.
In any case, the audience was enthusiastic and clapped two encores.
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