Blue Danube Waltz, Tritsch-Tratsch Polka, Radetzky March. Nice and good. Enjoying the turn of the year with familiar sounds – there is nothing wrong with that. The musical repertoire presented by the Garching Symphony Orchestra at its New Year’s Concert is of course a beginning that does justice to the bon mot “Every beginning has a magic in it” in a more original and literal way: the ensemble, conducted by conductor Tamara Mersetzky, will perform on Sunday, January 22nd, in the Garchinger Bürgerhaus from 4 p.m., offer a program that seeks to seduce the listener with magical sounds. It remains to be seen whether Garching’s mayor Dietmar Gruchmann (SPD) will achieve something similar this afternoon with his New Year’s speech.
“When we were planning the programme, we thought that our common thread could be ‘fairy tales and magic’, precisely so that we could perhaps also appeal to a somewhat younger audience,” explains Mersetzky. In the concert, Paul Dukas’ ingenious setting of Goethe’s “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” from 1897 and Modest Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain” will be heard, as well as pieces from the soundtrack of the Harry Potter films, for which the great film composer John Williams is responsible. For the young and busy conductor Tamara Mersetzky, who took up her post in Garching in 2020 and appreciated the “very benevolent, lovely atmosphere” in the orchestra from the start, it is only the second public appearance with the 1985 due to the pandemic and illness-related failure at the previous New Year’s Concert Sound body founded at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics.
At least as important as the warm atmosphere: the level and motivation are right in the ambitious amateur ensemble, which brings together around 65 musicians from the greater Munich area – from TU students to virtuoso pensioners. This is necessary again this time. The piece “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” by the French composer Paul Dukas, best known from the Disney film “Fantasia”, requires the development of an enormous variety of tones, concise themes and a feel for musical dramaturgy and effects despite its relatively short playing time. It is considered a highlight of program music. Dukas was known above all for his warm impressionistic tonal language and his refined rhythm. And with that he congenially implements the struggle of the apprentice with the enchanted broom, poetized by Goethe (“Oh, here comes the master! Lord, the need is great! The spirits I called, I can’t get rid of them now”) .
“It’s great and anything but a matter of course for an amateur orchestra to be able to master such a program.”
Of course, the interpretation of Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain” should also be exciting, which in Leopold Stokowski’s arrangement is also one of the pieces recorded for Disney’s “Fantasia”. This work is also considered a highlight of program music. The eerie symphonic poem is about a demon who summons the souls of the dead from their graves to celebrate a witches’ sabbath on Bald Mountain. The Harry Potter Suite and other imaginative compositions such as Maurice Ravel’s “Ma Mere l’Oye” or Vaughan Williams “The Lark Ascending” and Gustav Mahler’s “Blumine” are on the program.
“It’s technically very demanding at times and I take my hat off to the performance of every single player over the last six months,” states Mersetzky. “It’s great and anything but a matter of course for an amateur orchestra to be able to master such a program.” Pauline Karuga (violin) is the soloist. She was born in Munich in 1998, has won several first prizes at “Jugend musiziert”, studies at the local music academy and regularly works as a temp with the Munich Symphony Orchestra.
Mersetzky, who also studied at the Musikhochschule in Munich and plays several instruments, is multi-talented and already has respectable experience as a conductor: “I’m usually just nervous beforehand. When I’m standing in front of the orchestra, I calm down,” she says mental condition described. Not only are these good prerequisites, that in the end in Garching it is not so much the brooms that are enchanted, but rather the audience.
The New Year’s concert on Sunday, January 22, in Garching’s community center begins at 4 p.m. Information and maps are available from www.kultur-garching.de/veranstaltungen.