Special concert for a special purpose

Created: 08/18/2022, 13:02

By: Andrea Graepel

Have found each other again: church musician Anton Ludwig Pfell and the world-famous violin virtuoso Arabella Steinbacher.

© Andrea Jaksch

The old Nikolauskirche in Herrsching is to be converted into a culture hall.

The parish has now given the go-ahead.

The first benefit concert for this project is on the program on Thursday, August 25th.

It plays Arabella Steinbacher, world-famous violinist and Herrschingerin.

Herrsching

– Arabella Steinbacher is already on the move again when she tells the Starnberger Merkur together with church musician Anton Ludwig Pfell how the idea for the concert came about.

Your plane is already waiting, in a few hours you're going to Bilbao, because someone at the Camerata Salzburg has gotten sick, and Arabella Steinbacher is stepping in.

Before the benefit concert in Herrsching, the violinist will give further concerts on Mallorca and in Brandenburg.

It's festival time.

The 40-year-old has been fully booked again since January.

But she likes to take the time for the benefit concert.

“Many memories connect me with the old Nikolauskirche.

It is close to my heart to give the benefit concert for the reconstruction together with my dear friend Toni Pfell,” she says.

"Toni", that's what only friends should call him, emphasizes Pfell immediately.

As a church musician, he is and will remain Anton Ludwig Pfell, the 72-year-old insists.

Pfell has known Arabella Steinbacher since she was a child.

Her father, music professor Alexander Steinbacher, had played in Pfell's orchestra in Andechs.

Arabella Steinbacher also played from the age of eight.

She grew up bilingually in a family of musicians, because her mother Kyoko is a singer and comes from Japan.

Pfell hadn't heard from Arabella Steinbacher for a long time, who has been traveling from one concert to the next since she was 20 years old.

Until Corona.

"Suddenly the phone rang and it was Arabella," he says, still delighted.

There were no more concerts, she felt like a fish out of water, she says: "You literally dry up." Since she was back in Herrsching with her now almost three-year-old daughter, she asked to be allowed to play with him again - violin and organ.

For a small audience, both gave three summer concerts in 2020.

Now that the diocese had given the go-ahead for the conversion of the old Nikolauskirche into a cultural hall (we reported), if the altar room remains liturgically usable, they did not hesitate for long

As reported, the old parish church has been closed since 2015 due to construction defects.

When considering further use, the idea for a cultural hall was born.

The political community has already pledged its support.

Pfell has put together an exquisite program and arranged it with Bach's Violin Concerto in E major, Mozart's Adagio in E major and his Violin Sonata in G major and Beethoven's F major Romance at the end.

The concert will be played in two parts on the organ in the gallery and on the digital organ in the chancel of the Nikolauskirche.

"So that we can also be seen," says Pfell, because he not only likes to listen to the violin virtuoso, but also likes to watch her immersed playing in her reserved way.

Pfell calls it "Japanese".

Unlike the well-known violinists from Gauting, no fuss was made about Arabella Steinbacher, probably also because her father placed greater value on musicality.

From the age of eight she studied with Ana Chumachenco at the University of Music and Theater in Munich.

So she shared the teacher with Julia Fischer, just as both women share stages around the world today – “only at different times”.

And there is another special feature in the benefit concert.

Arabella Steinbacher will play a Guarneri del Gesù.

It is a violin from the year 1744, which she herself only has available for a short time from a Swiss foundation for a CD recording.

"Something very special," enthuses the Herrschingerin.

In order not to have to send anyone home - Pfell is expecting a large audience, he asks that people register for the concert by e-mail to kirchenmusik@pg-ammersee.de.

Admission is free, donations for the old St. Nicholas Church are welcome.