The Weilheim Chamber Orchestra inspires 450 listeners at its autumn concerts with the new conductor Florian Appel.
Weilheim - Enthusiasm for the new conductor, ovations for the young soloist: the two autumn concerts of the Weilheim Chamber Orchestra on Sunday in the large Hochlandhalle were an event. A total of 450 visitors clearly enjoyed experiencing live music on a larger scale - under strictly controlled 2G rules. Before these concerts there was a long dry spell, paved with unreasonable expectations: the 2020 pandemic screwed up the “farewell symphony” by Vasja Legiša, who had conducted the orchestra for ten years, twice. His successor Florian Appel has already been in office for over a year, but was not able to start rehearsing until the summer of 2021 after the lockdowns. If the rehearsal work with all the corona restrictions weren't enough of a challenge,Organizing an orchestral concert is a mammoth task and a tightrope act at the same time.
All the effort was worth it
The first big praise to be paid to those responsible at this point is that they succeeded so well. One does not envy anyone who currently has to create hygiene concepts for such an event, organize rapidly changing conditions, reservations and admission. How wonderful, how touching after all this was the moment when only the music spoke! Around 300 listeners came to the first round of the Autumn Concert 2021 on Sunday, 5 p.m., in a good mood, patient and in every way pandemic-compliant. Another 150 were two hours later for the second appointment. Performing the program twice to equalize the audience and, on top of that, having to move from the town hall, which has been closed due to renovation, to the acoustically difficult, climatically less string-friendly cattle hall, that was also required of the orchestra.
But with the first bars of the music it was clear: All the effort was worth it.
The live experience, the beauty and the power of the music grabbed the audience straight away, the excitement and joy were palpable in the wide area of the Hochlandhalle, in which a family atmosphere arose despite the large distances.
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There will be great jazz in Weilheim next weekend
Appel had placed early works by two classical prodigies on the program for his premiere with the chamber orchestra: by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The conductor let the beginning, the Andante from Mendelssohn's “Reformation Symphony” from 1830, seamlessly transition into Mozart's “Adagio and Fugue in C minor”, which is 42 years older. Pure euphony and technical pitfalls went hand in hand here - and the 20-piece “lovers orchestra” was warmly warmed up for the main work and the highlight of the evening: Mendelssohn's Concerto for Violin and String Orchestra in D minor. It is the first, less well-known, of his two violin concertos, composed when he was barely 13 years old. But what skill, what wealth of ideas lies in these three movements - and how much virtuosity they demand from the soloist! Versed,inspired and seemingly effortless, the violinist Moritz Defregger, who comes from Eberfing and is studying at the Salzburg Mozarteum, mastered both frenzied runs and quiet delicacy. After this brilliant performance, the 20-year-old was celebrated with thunderous applause, shouts of bravo and trampling on his feet. He thanked for this with a solo encore from Bach's second partita.
Artful crackling as an encore
After that, everything was swinging, everything was indulging: the orchestra and its conductor - who play and shape music in lively contact - appeared noticeably relaxed in the light, airy Divertimento in D major, which the 16-year-old Mozart in 1772 in a flow of creative urge in Salzburg Hof composed.
Whatever rubbish Florian Appel sometimes sits on the neck, this was proven by the tiny orchestral addition that crowned the well-rounded program and the all-round successful evening: "pièce japonaise", a piece by Kunsu Shim, which consists of rhythmically versed crackling of praline paper.
Emotional, substantial and also witty: these are 3 Gs that will hopefully remain with the Weilheim Chamber Orchestra for a long time to come.
Magnus Reitinger
