Choir on the road: MBC in Italy

It's a privilege to sing in the Munich Bach Choir no matter what, but a three-day tour in Italy is a nice perk.  Well, mostly.  It's actually pretty anstrengend (exhausting, demanding) to perform the same 3-hour work in three different cities for three evenings in a row, especially after a week of rehearsing every night but one...

The programs from our three concerts in Italy.

This was the St. Matthew Passion tour -- I guess we were Germans bringing the glory of Bach to Italians in the week before Easter :-)  Actually, the last two towns on our tour were in South Tyrol, which although in northern Italy (since 1919), has a majority German-speaking population.

Day 1 (March 23):

• I woke up at 5:30 a.m. (after a dress rehearsal until nearly 10 the night before) in order to catch an early Saturday U-Bahn to the edge of town where our buses were waiting for a 7:15 a.m. departure.  
• Seven hours on the bus, through the Alps, to Modena (speaking lots of German to lots of new friends, good immersion learning!).  
• Around 2 p.m. we pulled into this hotel lot, in the middle of nowhere, on the highway outside of Modena... to general incredulity and (good natured) complaining:

The dreary weather did not help the first impression of this concrete eyesore.

Clearly most musical groups need to save money, but all the choir and orchestra members were astounded that our professional trip manager had apparently booked this cheap hotel without checking it out.  The rooms weren't quite  as bad as the outside looked, but as my roommate/new friend Annette said upon walking in, this was definitely not "choir standard"...

A view from the stairway

The window blinds need some attention.

• After a somewhat chaotic meal in the hotel (the kitchen had said they'd be ready for 80 of us to eat at 3 pm, but... ), a short nap, a walk in the rain, we got on the buses again at 5:30 pm for the nearly one-hour trip further down the road, to our concert venue in Reggio Emilia.

Outside the Teatro Valli, in Reggio Emilia.
(Photo from Andreas H. in the choir, since I didn't bring my camera.)

Inside the theater.  This picture doesn't quite do it justice -- it was amazing just to step onto the stage, and even
more impressive when all the five floors of boxes were filled with people.  (Photo also from Andreas H.)

• Staging rehearsal at 6:30 pm, warm up at 7:45 pm.  The concert didn't start until 8:30 pm (those crazy Italians), and with a 20 minute intermission in the three hours of music, we weren't done singing until midnight.  It went well though, they loved us!
• Back on the bus, the drivers had beer we could buy and drink on the trip back.  Awesome.  We finally got back at the hotel a little after 1 a.m.  That was a long day...

Day 2 (March 24):

• Left Modena at 10:30 am, arrived in Meran, South Tyrol, at 1:30 pm, still in the cold rain (so much for warm and sunny Italy!), with all our concert attire in hand bags since the suitcases would be driven on to our hotel in Brixen. 
• To make up for the lousy hotel experience the first night, our tour manager managed to reserve enough places in a nice restaurant in Meran, so we could all have a decent hot meal before the next concert staging and rehearsal at 3:15 pm.  (Interesting that the menus in South Tyrol have both typical Italian and Bavarian fare.)

Annette and Tamara in the streets of Meran

Here are a couple shots inside the St. Nikolaus church in Meran, while we were rehearsing in the afternoon.
We only had one big church hall for a "green room" to change in.  You'll all be proud to know that I've become German enough to change clothes unbashfully, like they all do, in a room full of men and women...

  

This performance I think was our best.  The concert started at 5 pm, and since it was a "service" more than a concert, the break between the two main parts of the Passion was only a few minutes, instead of a full intermission.  

The audience  really loved us and we got a big standing ovation (maybe it helped, for both the performers and audience, that the concert was earlier in the day).  It felt great to sing this marvelous piece in a beautiful, 900-year old church.

• After the concert, all feeling pretty great, we got on the buses for the hour drive to our hotel in Brixen (which was much better, and we even had our own rooms).  Even though we didn't arrive until near 10 pm most of us went out and found really great pizza and beer afterwards.  Whew.  The trip was starting to be enjoyable!

Day 3 (March 25):  

Walking the streets of Brixen with some
of the Alto mob:
Tamara, Veronika, Uschi, and Carolin.

• This was our one day with free-time, and luckily the one day with some sun!  (Although still unusually cold.)  Since our concert rehearsing didn't start until 6 pm that day, we all enjoyed the beautiful town of Brixen. 

First, we found a colorful outdoor market.

• Gradually losing people to shopping, by mid-morning Tamara and Uschi and I decided to venture a (crazy) 20-minute bus ride up a nearby hill to the Novacella Abbey (link), founded in the 12th century and still one of the largest monasteries in Italy.

Tamara and I in the middle of the extensive abbey complex.

The Cathedral in the abbey is exquisite.

Here are some of the many pictures I took in the cathedral
of its countless beautiful details.
I had to angle my camera through the ornate gate,
 however, since we weren't allowed in.

Uschi and I waiting for the bus to get back
into town.  (The bus was 20 minutes late...
makes me appreciate German punctuality
all the more.)

• A late lunch, and a little more sightseeing in Brixen itself.  The Cathedral, in the centre of town, where were to sing, is also amazing.  (I'm almost getting to the point of beautiful-old-church burn-out...)
• 19:30 final concert.  It went well, but I think we were all near exhaustion.  (We did stay alert though, as our feet and noses were turning blue in the ice-cold church).

Inside the Brixen Cathedral, as we're
setting up for the concert.

• Another pizza and beer celebration in a local restaurant after the concert for the whole choir and then some of us stayed up talking (and drinking bad wine) in the hotel until 2 a.m....  Not really a good idea, since the buses left for Munich next morning at 8:30.   Ugh.

Whew.... the trip was full-packed, exhilarating, exhausting, and certainly good immersion practice for my German.  I also have an all-new appreciation for musicians on the road.  Unless you're a world-class star (and maybe even then) it seems that concert tours are incredibly strenuous, with all the travel, lousy hotels, uncertain food, rehearsals, and repeated concerts.  I love that fact that I got to know the St. Matthew Passion really well, but after so many rehearsals and then three concerts in a row, it's hard to stay "fresh".  I wonder how real pros do it, with scores of repeated performances.

And I wasn't quite done with the St. Matthew Passion after the trip.  We got back Tuesday, then Thursday evening had a dress rehearsal for our big concert on Good Friday afternoon in the huge Munich Philharmonie concert hall.

Rehearsal with the Bach Collegium München orchestra, in the Philharmonie hall of the Gasteig.

For some reason, that I couldn't quite understand (but it had to do with our contract with the Philharmonie) we had a different orchestra and different soloists when we were back in Munich.  It's amazing how well the piece came together again after only one rehearsal all together.  The musicians are certainly all well-expereinced professionals, but Herr Albrecht, our director, is also pretty amazing at eliciting real drama and emotion from us all.  Bach is certainly not boring!  (There are some parts of this piece, like when the earth trembles after Jesus is crucified, that sound like Baroque rock...)  I felt some real magical, goose-bump, moments during the performance Good Friday on that big stage.

It was an awesome experience to sing the St. Matthew Passion so intensely in the two weeks before Easter, but also exhausting.  Most all the choir members have sung this piece every Lent for decades, but I had to learn it very quickly in the last month or so.  The notes weren't the problem so much as lots of very fast German text!  And now that I know it so well, it's a little sad to think I won't have much opportunity to sing it again.  I'll just have to come back every few years for an encore tour ;-)