Guten Tag! ARO in Germany 2019

After much preparation, practice and packing, I’m finally at Stuttgart with Recorders at the ready, waiting for my lift to Bermatingen to meet up with other Arden Recorder Orchestra players for a weekend of performances. It’s all part of an Early Music Festival hosted by the town. Conveniently for us Mirjam’s sister is involved with the planning and due to their wonderful German efficiency and organisational skills we will all be arriving in time from various places across south Germany and Switzerland.

Personally I am looking forward to some child free time, which is why I am sat at the airport McDonald’s opposite one of the many kiddieland play areas. I’ve already completed a geocache, had a nap on my very early flight from Birmingham and enjoyed some glorious European sunshine.

Rehearsals, rehearsals and more rehearsals.

Wow it’s hot. Even in the usually cold Saxon church of St Georg, it’s still warm. However, stunning acoustics and amazing frescoes make it more than tolerable. It’s so rare in England to even get a glimpse of how our religious buildings used to look before everything was white washed. The altar and main church are covered in the vibrant blue and orange remains of biblical stories, apostles, angels and saints with the glint of gold and silver adorning the statues on the pillars. The altar is raised high, which is fun for our conductor if she gets too excited and steps back, but the audience will get a great view.

It takes a while but we finally got through all of our pieces, borrowed big instruments taking a while to adjust to and the heat playing havoc with our tuning. A relaxed lunch later, including a bit of impromptu mediaeval dance tune playing for the Re-enactment farmers outside, and we get to meet the fantastic kids from the local music school. Who would have thought the Thomas Tallis Canon could sound so interesting - next time we really should go for Spem in Allium!

Concert 1, St Georg, Bermatingen, 29/06/2019 (alright, and Concert 2 at Musikschule, Radolfzell, 30/06/2019)

With the temperature still pushing the mid to high 30s, the coolness of the old church offered much welcome relief to performers and audience alike. A brief introduction from the local mayor preceded the mass playing of the full orchestra and the local recorder students blasting the typically English recorder melody of Thomas Tallis’ infamous canon. Unison, four part and eight part rounds echoed through the cavernous venue - so simple yet so effective.

ARO moved straight into Gabrieli’s Canzon XII which delicately introduced the Renaissance contrapuntal sound world to the audience before the more raucous arrangements of medieval tunes. Santa Maria, Strela Do Dia, originally accredited to Alfonso X El Sabio from the 13th century but presented in this arrangement by Steve Marshall, has a wonderful melody that Steve places around the orchestra, sometimes with embellishments, using the lowers parts to create a distinctive rhythmic drone. The addition of Katyza, the local recorder teacher responsible for bringing all the children, with her bass crumhorn added yet another dimension to the soundscape. Another 4 Medieval Tunes also arranged by Marshall ensured that the orchestras requirement of medieval music was truly met.

Three short trios were presented on gemshorns to also ‘tick’ the medieval box, with varying success. We had to borrow two instruments and with them being notorious for their individuality meant that they were challenging to play. But they were certainly novel.

My personal favourite in the programme was Alan Davis’ Heavenly Fire . It is based on the Gregorian chant ‘Veni Creator Spiritus’ and tells of the Holy Spirit descending upon the apostles during Pentecost. One can really sense the apprehension felt by the men locked in a room in the opening bars before coming together to pray, and then the madness and confusion during the 13/8 section where the descents and basses are continuing the original plainchant in 6/8 with a 13/8 canon occurring in the other parts. Sustained chords with a rubato sopranino floating of the main theme creates a pivotal place in the middle of the piece as the rhythms and harmonies start to come back together, as the apostles start to make sense of their experience. A rising motif in a fanfare style gives the impression of celebration with most parts eventually joining in, with a climatic suspension in the final bars resolving to a satisfying cadence. I truly love this piece!

Vivaldi’s Concerto In G minor brought some tonal comfort and the orchestra played this well with some fantastically virtuosic playing in the top three parts. Personal I am still undecided on recorder orchestra arrangements of baroque string orchestra pieces but I suppose the recorder is synonymous with the baroque and therefor it is to be expected.

An emotional performance of Brightness Falls by one of AROs original members, Andrew Meville, saw a John Taverner ‘In Nomine’ used in a traditional way with comfortable modern harmonies built around it. The piece swells up with long sustained notes eventually subdividing, before a contrasting middle section with a repeating homophonic theme accompanying the sopranino presenting the In Nomine. This then returns to the original ideas with the shorter note values giving way to the long sustained notes, and slowing fading out instrument by instrument, eventually leaving the tenors on the final note of the In Nomine. Sadly Andrew passed away early this year and our performance was dedicated to him. Today I think we did him justice and he would have been proud of us.

ARO then returned to the renaissance with the popular The Leaves be Green by the infamous William Byrd. Typically the piece is performed by 5 instrumentalist but in a true ARO way we attempted something different. Taking the idea from pieces such as Staeps’ 'Berliner Sonate' we tried doubling the parts at the octave. The purists obviously would see this as sacrilege. Of course, this gave the group more challenges with tuning and had varying degrees of success. A beautifully rich and complex sound was created but it could be argued that some of Byrd’s detail and clever use of inversions became insignificant. However, it was a useful inclusion to the programme due to final composition.

The penultimate piece saw the children return to the stage to lead the orchestra in a specially commissioned arrangement of the round Sumer Is Icumen In . Although a slower tempo was used in comparison to the orchestras version within the 4 Medieval Tunes , it was a pleasant performance. Finally, ARO member Anne Martin was able to hear her composition Fantasia on ‘Surrey Leaves’, a charming piece based of the melody of Byrd’s The Leaves Be Green featuring an easy descant part ideal for including children.

Something that always catches me off guard is the generosity of applause and the gratitude of German audiences. My host for the weekend, who has kindly provided Beth and myself with accommodation, caught my eye during the applause and had such a look of pride towards myself and Beth that made me feel so appreciated and grateful to take part in such wonderful events.

The programme was repeated the following day at the music school in Radolfzell in a very different setting. It provided the children with a much more intimate experience of being part of the orchestra and they produced a wonderfully confident sound in the acoustic of their regular performance space. For us, the combination of the extreme heat and the modern acoustic of the purpose built performance room gave us some issues, specifically with tuning in the Byrd for which we can only learn from (mixing renaissance and baroque bores of various woods and sizes in heat is not a good idea). However, I feel that we inspired the children and parents to continue their recorder studies, and we had fun!

Post Concert Cool Down

A day of travelling back to Stuttgart airport and a bit of hanging around has given me a good chance to reflect, chill and enjoy the last moments of freedom, adulting and alcohol. We had an hour and a half on a boat cruising around a small section of Lake Konstanz/Constance before the rehearsal and concert on Sunday and I have to admit that I hadn’t felt that relaxed and calm for a long time. The journey to the airport involved a few changes but a two hour stint gave me chance to write the full concert review, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I do like writing and reflecting and must make more time to do this.

Observation 1 . How beautiful is South Germany!? We discovered this two years ago when we came over but it really does extend across the region. It was so quiet - Beth observed that she heard someone sneeze, that’s as loud as it got. I walked back from Sue and Alison’s ‘digs’ at midnight, only a two minute walk, but it was so safe and just not an issue. As for around the lake, I could move tomorrow. OK, extreme weather may have had an affect, but the buildings and cafes and museums and churches don’t change. I appreciate that we are incredibly close to the Swiss border, but it does feel like a Swiss chocolate box picture. Not the Germany we have in mind following our history lessons.

Observation 2 . Music education! I was in utter shock when we walked through the Radolfzell Music School. Well equipped practice rooms with every instrument taught by a specialist teacher or two, a smaller rehearsal/recital room with adjoining kitchen, and a purpose built concert hall complete with a full orchestral percussion line. I lost count of the marimbas, glockenspiels, vibraphones, metalaphones etc. Tubular bells were placed next to the four pedal timps, with a drum kit, Latin percussion set up, and other random percussion. There were grand pianos everywhere, and a spinet hidden in a corner. My understanding is that this is all extra curricular and parents pay for various lessons as it’s not provided in the standard school curriculum. However, I believe there may be some form of government subsidy. Talking to other maturer ARO members, they recall similar days in the UK. Our German representative, Katyza, implied that things aren’t as good as they seem but unfortunately we didn’t have the opportunity to discuss this in depth. However it’s certainly better than the current state of instrumental music education in the UK. I trained and worked in the development of ClassBand, based on the BlasserKlasse system used in some German secondary schools and fell in love with the German system. Hmmm...

Observation 3 . It’s so important to mix with a wide variety of people as you can not only learn so much, but potentially help them too. As an extrovert I need to spend time with people, and some are naturally drawn to sharing themselves with me, be it having an opportunity to discuss and explore their faith, or offload their challenges and ideas discovered in their studies, or sharing experiences of children, or even just having just one ,eine grosse bier bitte’ and letting all their inhibitions go (which will be forever known as ‘doing a Sylvia’ by me and Beth). Life is so short and precious so make time to laugh, drink good wine and eat great food. And make sure you use bug spray.