If Franziska Padberg had competed in the Olympic Games on Sunday, she would have certainly had a gold medal, regardless of the discipline. But the concertmaster of the orchestra of the Kulturverein Zorneding-Baldham did not stand on the podium, but on the stage of the Alter Speicher in Ebersberg and shone as a soloist in Charles-Auguste de Bériot’s violin concerto. An entertaining piece with spectacular passages that amazed the audience like a fiery juggling session, only that the artist did not let torches whirl through the air, but sounds. After many months of abstinence, that was worth so much cheering and applause from the audience in the packed hall that it was given a solo encore en suite.
Once again, on this occasion, the orchestra proved to be a reliable and concentrated companion for its soloist. With almost 30 musicians still well equipped, conductor Andreas Pascal Heinzmann had obviously done a great job during the rehearsals to equip the orchestra with the necessary fitness and passion for concert performance after a long break. Pauses on the note line increase the dramaturgy, pauses in the interplay, especially the compulsory ones, scratch one’s ability, especially with an amateur orchestra. There was no sign of that on Sunday, at this level the ensemble doesn’t have to fear comparison with its own past.
This also applies to the two listed youth works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The divertimento KV 113 of the 15-year-old and the symphony number 5 of the 9-year-old child prodigy were in good hands with the orchestra. We know this from previous appearances and wish it for future ones: With Mozart this orchestra blossoms like seldom anywhere else. Especially with Divertimento it was pure joy to listen to the wind instruments singing and the strings shimmering. A dense, closed performance, with well-balanced voices – like something out of a textbook. The symphony was in no way inferior, the two brisk Allegro movements in B flat major came playfully and cheerfully, the G minor andante gently embedded in between.
However, in this Andante, as in other slower passages of the concert, something was felt that would be called a “training deficit” in sport. This affected parts of the string section who have not yet found their way back to their original strength and security. To put it simply: apart from the cellos-bass group, some of them were still “too close to the reeds” in their playing. With an orchestra made up of amateurs, this is both understandable and forgivable in the wake of the pandemic-related hurdles when working on the piece together. The sometimes diffuse sound that arose for this reason has taken some of the liveliness and radiance of the first two movements of Antonín Dvořák’s E major serenade, which were then played. The dialogue between the string groups, from which this piece thrives right at the beginning, did not want to gain the necessary momentum. The theoretical danceability of the woven folk tunes and the waltz was only felt rudimentarily. Here it takes more game practice to find your way back to the old class.
The winds, otherwise the safe bank when the orchestra performed, had a mixed day on Sunday. Was it the unusual arrangement in which the orchestra was set up very low due to the spacing regulations? Was there a lack of carrying capacity due to the strings? Had you exhausted yourself emotionally the day before at the concert in Zorneding? Or had the conductor asked his tone setter to hold back in order to take unnecessary pressure off the strings? Especially with the first movement from the Brandenburg Concerto No. 2, who opened the concert, the highlights remained a bit hesitant. The two Mozarts, on the other hand, had a familiar tempo and temperament and the winds returned to their familiar leadership role, above all the two clarinetists performed their task as courageously and skilfully as one could wish.
At the end there was rich and powerful applause for the respectable performance of the orchestra and conductor. Carried by the joy of reunion, gratitude for the opportunity to be able to participate in a live performance, and recognition for the lived proof of musical way of life, this applause clearly conveyed the desire for more.