As of: March 7, 2024, 9:00 p.m
By: Sabine Closer
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At the rehearsal with the Weilheim Chamber Orchestra led by conductor Florian Appel, the young composer Katharina Schmauder gave the musicians practical tips.
Her work “Am Strom” is inspired by the bunting.
© Closer
She grew up in Wielenbach and began taking composition lessons at the age of seven.
Katharina Schmauder has now written a work for the Weilheim Chamber Orchestra.
The premiere is in May.
Weilheim – Although she lives near Freiburg and performs with four ensembles as a violinist and viola, Katharina Schmauder has never lost touch with her homeland.
Growing up in Wielenbach, she first attended high school in Tutzing, then in Weilheim, where she also took her Abitur.
At just 16 years old!
“I actually wanted to move further away to study, but my mother thought I was too young for that,” says the musician, who was born in 1994.
So she took the entrance exam in Munich for violin and composition - in the hope that one of the two would work out.
But she received approval for both.
“I thought, I could give it a try,” explains Schmauder, who started playing the violin at the age of four and composing at the age of six.
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Her mother encouraged her talent from an early age
When she was seven, her mother - the piano teacher Eva Müller, who encouraged her daughter's musical talent from an early age - asked a composition teacher in Munich if he wanted to teach Katharina.
“He was skeptical at first because he had never had such young students before.” But he was convinced.
And so the young woman was able to demonstrate several years of composition lessons when she took her entrance exam.
After successfully completing a double degree in Munich in 2019, Schmauder added a master's degree in viola in Freiburg.
She wanted to switch to the viola as a primary school student, but was talked out of it because of her small hands.
Both instruments are now used in her chamber music ensembles.
All of their ensembles are dedicated to new music
As a composer, she plays exclusively in ensembles that are dedicated to new music.
Firstly, there is the Zentaur Quartet, which she founded in Munich in 2017 with fellow students.
Initially only intended as a one-off project, it has developed into a permanent fixture.
Since the members now live in Freiburg, Leipzig, Munich and Vienna, rehearsals can only be carried out on a project-by-project basis, “but then very intensively”.
The Ensemble Aventure was founded in Freiburg in 1986.
The young musician took the place of her Freiburg viola professor in 2019.
The ensemble has its own concert series in Freiburg, but can also be experienced throughout Germany and abroad.
Schmauder has been playing viola in the Holst Sinfonietta, which is primarily dedicated to niche programs such as works from the early 20th century, since 2023.
Depending on the work, the line-up varies from three to twenty musicians.
The ensemble scop e, founded in 2021, is still missing.
Here the scene occurs to the music;
Videos, lights, costumes and make-up complement the performance.
At 29, already an impressive catalog of works
Schmauder also feels connected to the theater as a composer.
She has already written ballet music and an adaptation of Monteverdi's “L'Orfeo” for the Plauen-Zwickau Theater, incidental music for Augsburg and the classroom opera “Don Quixote” for Gelsenkirchen.
“What appeals to me is that the music is in a different context here than in a concert.
She has a role, supports what is happening on stage – or tells a contrary story,” explains the composer.
Her impressive catalog of works also lists chamber music from a wide range of ensembles as well as orchestral works, some with choir.
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“Am Strom”: music inspired by the bunting
The question remains when does the performing musician find the time to compose?
“For me it’s really project-by-project work,” explains Schmauder.
In May 2023, Florian Appel, the artistic director of the Weilheim Chamber Orchestra, asked whether she would write a work for them.
Only the duration of around ten minutes and the cast were specified; the composer was free to choose the theme.
“I chose the bunting as a reference object,” she says.
“How do people live by the water?
There are droughts and floods, but also festivals that are celebrated on the banks.” And a clattering mill (the mill wheel in the upper town was the inspiration) also appears.
After only two rehearsals, the orchestra recently met the composer in the hall of the Weilheim Music School - and the reporter was allowed to listen.
Appel's rehearsals are committed and motivating;
Schmauder chimes in every now and then with practical tips.
The mill music sounds, developing a nervous tension, dense and gripping.
At the spring concert of the Weilheim Chamber Orchestra on May 5th, the premiere of “Am Strom” can be experienced in the large Hochlandhalle.
The spring concerts
of the Weilheim Chamber Orchestra begin on Sunday, May 5th, at 5 and 7 p.m. in the large Hochland Hall.
In addition to “Am Strom” by Katharina Schmauder, works by Marianna Martines, Anna Amalia von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, Emilie Mayer and Fanny Hensel can be heard.
Admission is free.
Further information: www.kammerorchester-weilheim.de
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