Autumn Festival in Baden-Baden with the Balthasar-Neumann ensemble | EUROtoday

As a teen he was smitten by Baroque music, and as a younger grownup he was smitten by Renaissance music. He then grew to become director of the Choeur de l’Orchestre de Paris and realized the symphonic repertoire. Today, the Frenchman with roots in Senegal, Lionel Sow, is a vocal specialist who European choirs are vying for. He presently holds senior positions at Radio France and on the gigantic National Music Forum in Wroclaw. Baden-Baden is on the way in which. Here it has been an “integral part” of the “La Grande Gare” autumn competition since 2022, primarily a “large station” for the “Balthasar Neumann” ensemble. Thomas Hengelbrock based the choir in 1991 and the orchestra 4 years later, because the German equal to the British establishments of historic efficiency follow.

And much like John Eliot Gardiner’s Monteverdi Choir, the Balthasar Neumann Choir has lengthy since expanded its repertoire properly into the twentieth century, for instance with the cantata “Figure humaine” (1943) by Francis Poulenc. Their 2023 efficiency in Baden-Baden resulted in a loud choir unison: it’s crucial to proceed working with Lionel Sow.

Sow and Hengelbrock know one another from Paris and share an “obsession” – intonation: for Sow an “unattainable ideal.” In the temperature-controlled system, it “always remains a compromise” and should be always improved, he says in an interview with this newspaper. Both even have a love for Bach in frequent: “Balthasar Neumann” has “Bach in his blood,” is aware of the “culture of the repertoire,” and has a “historically informed understanding of music.” Under these circumstances, says Sow, compromises are not allowed. What for him means one thing like “radicality of interpretation” by way of rhythm, tempo, have an effect on and which means. He demonstrated the willingness to take dangers and his rousing ardour for making music – conducting from reminiscence and more and more dancing – with three double-choral motets by JS Bach, together with “Singet dem Herrn ein Neues Lied” BWV 225, which is to be understood fairly actually: such a vocal miracle had by no means even come to the Lord’s consideration earlier than.

The singers have been joined by a luxuriously outfitted continuo group, by which the violone participant with a spiccato bow fortunately took on the function of (jazz) drummer. The further choir for the chorales inside the motets can be luxurious. The undeniable fact that Sow was additionally smitten by Hugo Distler’s music was no less than stunning; he considers himself fortunate to be performing it in Germany (he even recorded Distler’s “Totentanz” in Poland). The mixture of newer concord, “crazy” rhythm, medieval melody and outdated notation with out steady bar strains fascinates him in two methods: in its high quality and intelligence.

At the Baden-Baden Festival Hall, “Balthasar Neumann” has a residency alongside Hamburg, Fontainebleau, Barcelona and Havana (!), and Baden-Baden is essentially the most intensive, says supervisor Christina Schonk. Here the freelancers come collectively for 2 weeks for a “family meeting”, throughout which all departments of this huge firm can current themselves: opera (this 12 months with the semi-staged “Cenerentola” by Gioacchino Rossini below Thomas Hengelbrock), choir, orchestra and chamber live performance (in honor of Pauline Viardot, who lives in Baden by alternative), interactive household live performance, European Singing Festival, by which professionals and amateurs can come collectively after a three-day workshop with lecturers from the Choirs give a live performance collectively within the Festspielhaus, below Sow’s course.

“Balthasar Neumann”, which is 85 p.c self-financed and has solely been receiving public assist from the EU since this 12 months with the European academy program “Balthasar NOVA” for younger musicians, has already taken up the reason for supporting younger singers with its Singers Academy. The workshops have two targets: coaching younger expertise to sing in a choir and recruiting new voices for their very own ensemble.

Lionel Sow shall be considerably concerned on this intensive area of exercise, which additionally consists of social concert events in hospitals, youth psychiatrists and dementia departments, within the coming 12 months. It is alleged that Thomas Hengelbrock desires to return to his pre-Corona workload. This will also be understood as an invite to the Balthasar Neumann Orchestra to work with new conductors. The Englishman Finnegan Downie Dear, who gained the “Gustav Mahler” conducting competitors in Bamberg in 2020, shouldn’t be a baroque specialist, however as Hengelbrock’s assistant on an opera manufacturing, he will need to have grow to be so aware of historic efficiency follow that the orchestra now entrusted him with a pure Beethoven night, which he accomplished with flying colours. Dear represents the reasonably uncommon conductor kind of economical actions – generally they’re so minimal that they can’t be acknowledged by the viewers. And it was exactly this that had the best impact in Beethoven’s seventh symphony with the good (wooden) wind devices and the three (!) double basses going into ecstasy.

And at Beethoven’s Violin Concerto you’ll have heard the well-known pin drop within the giant competition corridor when the unbelievable Isabelle Faust rose vibratolessly on the intestine strings of her Stradivarius violin right into a area “above the starry sky”, as it’s later mentioned within the Ninth, and but at all times remained a part of the orchestra – till the cadenza, by which she dialogued with the timpani. Performing with a soloist in any respect was a primary for the orchestra, one thing that did not occur with Hengelbrock. Could it probably work with out him?