Sommerklänge: A concert rising like a phoenix from the ashes

The Zug ensemble Chamäleon kicked off the popular summer sounds, which can now take place in 2020, despite Corona. As the concert venue for all five performances, the brand new Zephyr Hangar of the V-Zug provided excellent acoustics.

"For us, it's like a mirage, unreal and yet real," said Peter Hoppe of the Sommerklänge (summer sounds) festival team when introducing the first concert of this year. Classical music in real time! After the long uncertainty in the lockdown, the musicians, who have been existentially affected by the crisis, are allowed to play again: "We need your stage presence, your charisma and the mysterious, silent dialogue with the audience, in the way that is only possible in a live concert," said this year's concert programme. At the same time, Sommerklänge are celebrating their 20th anniversary under the artistic direction of pianist Madeleine Nussbaumer.

The concerts traditionally take place at various historical locations in the canton of Zug. But "extreme times require extraordinary measures," writes the anniversary team, and has provided a unique alternative, namely to hold all five events in the Zephyr Hangar, the new V-Zug manufacturing building.

The crown of the hangar is a hall made of spruce wood with an eye-catching shed roof – a jagged construction that allows larger floor areas in classic industrial buildings, because the weight of huge spans is distributed to many lateral supports, without using columns.

Photo 1: Plenty of space for the audience and the best sound conditions: The Zephyr Hangar of the V-Zug has passed its "test" as a stage for the "Sommerklänge 2020”.
Photo 2: The Zug ensemble Chameleon were the first performers

"Unintentional, but happy coincidence"
The audience turned up in large numbers for the first concert evening, but were almost lost in the enormous space of 40 to 90 metres – in which chairs that you could position yourself stood around the concert podium. Michael Roth from the Diener und Diener architectural firm enthusiastically explains how the timber construction was built in record time at the end of 2019, that it is now approaching its completion and that it will be handed over to the factory just after the last concert on 2 August. "And as the music rehearsals showed, the acoustics are also phenomenal, and, for me, that is an unintended, but happy coincidence, a gift!"

The motto of the evening - "Phoenix from the Ashes" - sums up all of this. With a modern work by the Canadian composer Kelly-Marie Murphy, "Give Me New Phoenix Wings To Fly" (1997), based on a poem by the British poet John Keats, at the centre. The Chameleon ensemble, with Madeleine Nussbaumer on piano, Tobias Steymans on violin and Luzius Gartmann on cello, let the fire of the phoenix burn with sometimes sharp, sometimes sluggish dissonances. The music of the first movement, "Fire", reflects the fluttering, trembling glow of the ancient bird and, at the end, its wild fall into the depths.

"Desolation" is the name of the following lament, full of long bow strokes and trills from the piano – as if the dust of destruction was still in the air. In "Rebirth", however, the wings move again, sink back, and then twitch again. And then the piano sets in powerfully, the strings slide upwards, and, dramatically, the bird rises, life from the ashes – still inharmonious, hammering, unstoppable. "Here I am again!" signals the sudden Forte-ending.

Existentially important questions as a topic
Everyone in the light-flooded hall could understand Murphy's message: "No matter how destructive an event may be, you can recover from it and start over" The concert evening addresses existentially important questions and is dedicated to "happy works". Two Dvorak Bagatelles (op. 47), miniatures inspired by folk songs, were enchanting in their natural warmth. A second violin hereby joined in, played by Nadezhda Korshakova. And Gustav Mahler's piano quartet movement in A minor also required Alexander Besa with his viola; he has also been part of the group for years. The "happiness" here lies in the fact that a chamber music work by Mahler has been preserved at all, and that the only Allegro-movement of the then sixteen-year-old highly gifted composer that is still available is an intriguing, sometimes longingly floating, then again temperamentally forceful beauty.

Losing yourself in "infinite music"
Dvorak's Piano Quintet in A major No. 2, op. 81 came after the break, and, as a listener, one loses oneself for another forty minutes in the universe of this "infinite music", which continues to spin, to modulate, finds new motifs, dances, sings, almost willingly places one vignette on the other. The fine interplay of the five musicians was rewarded with a hearty applause at the end.

Note
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