Arrival in Luxembourg
After a whirlwind opening week in San Francisco (which included our Opening Gala and a special concert for local community groups), the Orchestra and touring staff quickly packed their bags for a one week tour to Europe. It sounds fairly simple enough, like going to Tahoe for the weekend. But when travelling with 125 musicians, 16 technical crew and staff, and packing 424 instruments in 141 trunks weighing 27,293 pounds….you get the picture. In this atmosphere of heightened security and travel restrictions, this takes some pretty serious coordination. Luckily, the SFS touring staff is quite experienced in taking an orchestra around the world and all went off without a hitch.
Arrival in Frankfurt, Germany, and then a three hour bus ride west along the banks of the Mosel and arrival in Luxembourg. When pressed, I must say I can’t name a single famous Luxembourgian (or is it Luxemburger?)…but I’m sure there must be some. After all, this country is over one 1000 years old. But the fact that it’s the 5th smallest country in the world (smaller even than Rhode Island) probably has something to do with it. And just as San Francisco can be a wonderful melting pot of languages, a single afternoon stroll on Columbus Avenue hearing Cantonese, Italian, Spanish among others, Luxembourg is a similarly diverse linguistic city. A walk around town means hearing many languages spoken. The small country is wedged among three bigger countries, Germany to the east, Belgium to the north and west, and France to the south. It actually has three official languages (German, French, and a Germanic dialect called Letzeburgish), all three of which are learned in school and commonly spoken. Luckily, most also know enough English to make the Orchestra members very comfortable on their travels.
While the musicians enjoyed a free day to recover from jetlag (some visited family, some toured the nearby sights, while others rested after a long day of travel) Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas spent the day rehearsing for our first concert, Mahler’s Symphony No. 8. Also called his Symphony of a Thousand, the work features three choruses, eight vocal soloists, 100 musicians and a conductor. Ok…..so it’s not a thousand, it’s a little over 300….but it’s still a lot of musicians to fit on one stage. MTT spent the day rehearsing the three choruses and soloists. The choruses are from Europe, and all are delighted to be singing with the SFS in our concerts. One of the choruses is from Prague, and left home at 1am on Monday morning, rode 10 hours through the night to make it to Luxembourg just in time for the rehearsal. They must really love Mahler.
Tuesday brought the orchestra into the hall for rehearsals. Performing in venues other than Davies Hall requires extra preparation. Musicians may be used to hearing certain things a certain way in their home hall, and performing in strange environs always tests their skills in adapting to new acoustics to make the work sound its best (more about the value of this later). The concert hall itself is almost brand new. The Salle de concerts Grande-Duchesse Josephine-Charlotte (we just call it the Philharmonic) has been open a little over a year and is quite a stunning building, curved lines and natural light throughout. Once inside, the hall is moderate in size, only 1300 seats (about half of Davies Symphony Hall) which makes this concert the toughest ticket in town by far. We may well be the first American orchestra ever to tour with Mahler 8, and the buzz around town has definitely been noticeable. Inside the hall, the acoustics are quite favorable, intimate and warm and everyone seems to enjoy this new venue. The hall definitely has all the creature comforts a visiting orchestra would need, and those of us blogging are thrilled to find that it’s a big wireless hotspot! Between our laptops and Blackberries, musicians and staff are happily well connected with everyone back home.
Here are some photos from our first two days in Luxembourg:
A view from the Fortress built in 963 that founded the country.
The striking facade of the new Philharmonie.
MTT giving some advice to a few members of the Swiss
children's chorus singing in Mahler's Symphony No. 8.
Rehearsals for Mahler 8: two small groups of brass players are
scattered throughout the hall. Not a bad view of the show.
Rehearsal for Mahler's Symphony No. 8 for 100 orchestra members
3 choruses totaling 200 singers, 8 vocal soloists and one MTT.
Arrival in Frankfurt, Germany, and then a three hour bus ride west along the banks of the Mosel and arrival in Luxembourg. When pressed, I must say I can’t name a single famous Luxembourgian (or is it Luxemburger?)…but I’m sure there must be some. After all, this country is over one 1000 years old. But the fact that it’s the 5th smallest country in the world (smaller even than Rhode Island) probably has something to do with it. And just as San Francisco can be a wonderful melting pot of languages, a single afternoon stroll on Columbus Avenue hearing Cantonese, Italian, Spanish among others, Luxembourg is a similarly diverse linguistic city. A walk around town means hearing many languages spoken. The small country is wedged among three bigger countries, Germany to the east, Belgium to the north and west, and France to the south. It actually has three official languages (German, French, and a Germanic dialect called Letzeburgish), all three of which are learned in school and commonly spoken. Luckily, most also know enough English to make the Orchestra members very comfortable on their travels.
While the musicians enjoyed a free day to recover from jetlag (some visited family, some toured the nearby sights, while others rested after a long day of travel) Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas spent the day rehearsing for our first concert, Mahler’s Symphony No. 8. Also called his Symphony of a Thousand, the work features three choruses, eight vocal soloists, 100 musicians and a conductor. Ok…..so it’s not a thousand, it’s a little over 300….but it’s still a lot of musicians to fit on one stage. MTT spent the day rehearsing the three choruses and soloists. The choruses are from Europe, and all are delighted to be singing with the SFS in our concerts. One of the choruses is from Prague, and left home at 1am on Monday morning, rode 10 hours through the night to make it to Luxembourg just in time for the rehearsal. They must really love Mahler.
Tuesday brought the orchestra into the hall for rehearsals. Performing in venues other than Davies Hall requires extra preparation. Musicians may be used to hearing certain things a certain way in their home hall, and performing in strange environs always tests their skills in adapting to new acoustics to make the work sound its best (more about the value of this later). The concert hall itself is almost brand new. The Salle de concerts Grande-Duchesse Josephine-Charlotte (we just call it the Philharmonic) has been open a little over a year and is quite a stunning building, curved lines and natural light throughout. Once inside, the hall is moderate in size, only 1300 seats (about half of Davies Symphony Hall) which makes this concert the toughest ticket in town by far. We may well be the first American orchestra ever to tour with Mahler 8, and the buzz around town has definitely been noticeable. Inside the hall, the acoustics are quite favorable, intimate and warm and everyone seems to enjoy this new venue. The hall definitely has all the creature comforts a visiting orchestra would need, and those of us blogging are thrilled to find that it’s a big wireless hotspot! Between our laptops and Blackberries, musicians and staff are happily well connected with everyone back home.
Here are some photos from our first two days in Luxembourg:
A view from the Fortress built in 963 that founded the country.
The striking facade of the new Philharmonie.
MTT giving some advice to a few members of the Swiss
children's chorus singing in Mahler's Symphony No. 8.
Rehearsals for Mahler 8: two small groups of brass players are
scattered throughout the hall. Not a bad view of the show.
Rehearsal for Mahler's Symphony No. 8 for 100 orchestra members
3 choruses totaling 200 singers, 8 vocal soloists and one MTT.
posted by OT at 6:08 AM
1 Comments:
I was at the concert on Tuesday in Luxembourg. Great performance, well done. Amazing number of performers!
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