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BIRGIT KOLAR
Day 2:
The concert continued with a concertino by Franz Lehár and a concertino called “Mozart” by Franz von Suppé.
For me, this second day was the most exhausting – two rather virtuoso pieces in two sessions of 3 hours each.
Thoughts on Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto
…about responsibility, hope and new energies!
A week ago I was invited by JONDE, the Spanish National Youth Orchestra, to prepare and coach the first violins for two concerts.
I spent a very special time with wonderful young people for three days, which touched me deeply.
These three days clearly showed me a new generation of musicians. A new generation that is ready to let go of old patterns such as competition, envy and power and to fully embrace their inner calling, their love of music!
This was not only expressed in the irrepressible desire to make music together at the highest level, it was also expressed above all in their dealings with each other.
This group was carried by a love, an understanding and mutual support, a mutual enjoyment that I have never experienced with such intensity.
The musical result was accordingly!!!
These are the new energies that we so urgently need, this is the hope that I have for the musical future, for the coming generations of musicians!
But who is responsible for making this possible? Don’t we keep hearing that the next generation is responsible for improving the “world”? That is the mission of young people, and we place all our hopes in them.
I only agree with that to a certain extent.
I believe that we, the generation before us, bear the greatest part of the responsibility! We are the ones who have to create a space for each new generation to be able to further increase these new opportunities, these new energies with which these people are born, live and develop.
It cannot be that we put everything that we had to experience in our previous life one-to-one over these “new” people again, pulling them into our “old frequency” so that they have to have dubious experiences that we should have transformed long ago in our personal development process!
In my opinion, expressing disappointment about young people also has to do with the fact that many of us “older” people are closed to self-examination, do not face up to our own traumas and believe that it is up to the next generation to redeem them.
From my personal point of view, this is part of the much-discussed generation gap….
Life is an exchange – if we give the next generation the basis, the trust, the recognition and the faith in them to create a new humanity, then the young people will turn to us in gratitude, because they too will then have the opportunity to bow with all due respect to all previous generations who have taken it upon themselves in their respective lives to suffer through difficult conflicts, to forgive each other and thereby increase the energy step by step.
These young people, whom I had the pleasure of meeting, have succeeded in doing so and I know that they will carry this shared experience in their hearts and open new and even greater doors of light for their children!
Thank you from left to right: Samuel, Elsa, Raquel, Silvia, Carlos, Marina, David and Daniel!
Maestro Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos
Following this concert, he was honored on the occasion of his eightieth birthday.
CD recording at home… Day 1: Introduzione – Allegro divertissimo
A wonderful, intense and unforgettable time in Ossiach, in the south of Austria, began with such a morning view. Ossiach is a small village with a large monastery and an even larger and very well-known summer festival, the Carinthian Summer.
My career actually began in Ossiach – in 1988 I was invited by the then festival director Dr. Gerda Fröhlich to a sonata matinee as part of her “Young Talents” cycle. The program included one of Mozart’s two-movement sonatas, the Cesar Franck Sonata and Schubert’s Fantasy in C major.
This time it was not the Carinthian Summer, but the Oesterreichische Nationalbank that made this wonderful stay at this very special place possible for me. As part of their “Valuable Sounds” project, a CD is recorded every year with instruments from their collection and their players in order to archive the sound of their instruments and also as a Christmas present for their customers.
After Christmas I will be able to buy back the master tape and thus all the rights – a more than generous gesture from the OeNB. A big thank you to my longstanding and loyal supporters!
For my CD, the newly built, acoustically exceptional Alban Berg Hall was chosen as the recording venue! I was accompanied by the Carinthian Symphony Orchestra and Martin Kerschbaum was at my side as conductor.
The program of the CD corresponds to my musical background:
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz von Suppe, Franz Lehár and Kurt Schwertsik
The first day began with the violin concerto by Kurt Schwertsik http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Schwertsik
When I think of Kurt Schwertsik, I also think of Joseph Haydn – not stylistically, of course! Schwertsik has his very own musical language, but it is his intelligent humor in his music that reminds me so much of Haydn!
The piece is in five movements. The opening and closing movements bracket the middle movements, so to speak, which are clearly distinguished from the outer movements by their different, colorful moods. It is the charming variety of Schwertsik’s music that is enchanting! But there is also the challenging side – the one that could make you sweat if you didn’t have such great colleagues at your side….
I’ll start with Martin Kerschbaum – he was a fantastic musical accompanist! Martin’s precision, his stability and his conducting clarity made this difficult piece incredibly easy for me and my orchestra colleagues! His musical and human empathy will be praised at length!
(here during a “break rehearsal” to go through the upcoming passages together again…)
My great thanks go to my colleagues in the Carinthian Symphony Orchestra, who created a working atmosphere not only at the highest musical level, but also at such an exceptionally high human level, which enabled me to free myself from any pressure, from any tension, and to give myself completely to the joy of my heart! THANK YOU!
My special thanks also go to the chief conductor of the orchestra, Alexander Soddy, who generously made his time available for a Schwertsik pre-rehearsal!
I will introduce the “invisible man in the background”, the “incorruptible voice from the loudspeaker”, my recording manager in detail in the next blog entry. He’s the one you can’t hear, but whose ear, whose capacity, whose love of music and musicians makes him the real protagonist of this project! I’m really looking forward to writing about this special person!
We ended the first day of recording satisfied and well tired with a delicious meal and a good glass of Austrian wine in our beautiful accommodation, the “Stiftschmiede”.
Day two and three will follow shortly!
All the best and see you soon,
Birgit
Welcome to
Welcome to my new homepage!
And to my blog!
For a long time I struggled with the blog question… should I do this to myself? Should I do this to anyone?
Then, in the course of updating my homepage, I discovered that I am celebrating my 20th anniversary as a concertmaster this year.
I would like to share with you, dear readers, what I felt when I became aware of these 20 years, so to speak.
20 years…
Looking back, it’s been an incredibly fast journey, almost unbelievable…
In the depths of my heart, a journey of musical, human and emotional intensity, through highs and lows, through great moments, through hours of learning that you can’t force into a time frame. It is an inner richness that cannot be measured in terms of time or quality, but which also has neither a beginning nor an end.
A musical review would certainly be interesting, but not of primary importance to me personally. Instead, I would like to concentrate, albeit briefly and concisely, on the personal development that I had to and was allowed to undergo, on my feelings in this inaugural blog.
How does it feel to be a concertmaster in one of the leading symphony orchestras at the age of 24?
It makes the soul happy, but it also makes the ego happy and not a little…
You have proven something to yourself and to others, you are rightly happy and proud of your performance and your success.
How does it feel to be in a comparably young, up-and-coming symphonic orchestra in Spain after twenty years?
The soul rejoices and a deep gratitude sets in.
Gratitude to be able to integrate some of the experience I have been able to gather here, but also to develop it further within myself. Gratitude to work in an environment that allows you to open yourself wholeheartedly to music, to let go of your ego and immerse yourself in unlimited creativity.
