When Ole Kristian Ruud ends the evening performance with a final bow long after 10 p.m., it is not only the conductor and musicians of the Ungdomssymfonikerne, the Norwegian National Youth Orchestra, who are exhausted. The audience also need a break. After many minutes of clapping and calls for two encores, which they receive, the applause refuses to end. Eventually, however, the audience begin to stream outside and down the broad staircase of the concert hall on Gendarmenmarkt into the Berlin night. The staircase itself is covered by a blue carpet dotted with yellow stars, which should really come as no surprise since the Gendarmenmarkt becomes home to the “voice of Europe” for two weeks every August.
In any event, that is how Gabriele Minz put it. Once the co-initiator of the Young Euro Classic, she has now managed the festival for the eleventh year. “We filled the summer music gap in Berlin,” says Minz. The event’s success proves her right: some 26,000 visitors attended concerts on this year’s 17 festival days. That’s not bad in a city where culture is certainly not in short supply.
Yet, Young Euro Classic is not merely a festival that aims to provide good entertainment for Berlin’s classical music lovers. It also provides a meeting place for young musicians themselves, who come not only from all corners of Europe, but also – as again this year – from China, Israel and the USA. In preparing for the Young Euro Classic, Gabriele Minz and her team often have to get right down to basics, because they do not only invite established youth orchestras, but also initiate and support the foundation of entirely new ensembles. This year, as a result, the Festival Orchestra Southeastern Europe achieved an acclaimed premiere at the Young Euro Classic – a colourfully mixed orchestra including equal representation by young musicians from the various countries of former Yugoslavia and a number of German colleagues. Last year, Dieter Rexroth, the festival’s artistic director, travelled through the Balkan region to gain musicians’ support for the project. Soon afterwards 17 young musicians toured through the western Balkans, and this year the group with 49 members grew to orchestral strength.
“I have long yearned for an idea like this,” says Martina Filjak. “At last, it’s being realized.” Working with the Festival Orchestra Southeastern Europe was something special for the internationally renowned pianist from Croatia: “Unfortunately, the war has strongly isolated the countries of former Yugoslavia from one another,” she says. “That’s why it was very moving to see how well the musicians understood one another after two weeks.” Following the performance in Berlin, the orchestra went on concert tour again – this time to Croatia and Montenegro. “The important thing is that communication is encouraged between the different countries,” says festival director Minz. “That’s what we’re trying with the project, which would almost certainly not have developed in the region itself.”
Minz also tried new approaches to funding – and is therefore confident that the orchestra will continue to exist in coming years. Although the two tours were financed by Germany’s Federal Foreign Office, the young musicians’ Berlin performance was made possible with private donations from so-called orchestra patrons.
If you want to know how this kind of musical success can continue, you only have to talk to Fuad Ibrahimov. Two years ago the young conductor with the Young Philharmonic Azerbaijan participated in the Young Euro Classic for the first time – an orchestra that was also only founded following a festival initiative. “At that time we had different problems in our country,” explains Ibrahimov. “That’s why I initially couldn’t even imagine we would be able to get a whole orchestra together.” He was all the more delighted when things didn’t turn out as he had expected: after four weeks of rehearsals and a successful festival concert in Berlin a Swiss foundation was found that was prepared to provide funding – and helped the 70-person orchestra travel to Berlin for the second time this year.
For Ibrahimov the project has long since become a labour of love: the conductor, who has lived and studied in Germany since 2002, regularly travels to Baku to practise with the Young Philharmonic Azerbaijan. “I want to be a bridge between the two countries,” says Ibrahimov. “I want to pass on what I learn here in Germany to the young musicians in Azerbaijan.” In his mind, however, the conductor has already progressed much further: just as he himself makes Azerbaijanian music and compositions known in Germany, he now also aims to invite German orchestral musicians to Azerbaijan. “That will still take a long time,” says Ibrahimov. “But I know it is possible.”////
