A conceivably representative and musically strong start for the Rheingau Music Festival, which now offers 190 concerts at eighteen venues in the Rheingau and the neighboring regions until September 5: the opening evening traditionally played by the Frankfurt Radio Symphony in the basilica of Eberbach Monastery was also this time the annual benefit concert of the Federal President, so that the six hundred seats in the double checkerboard pattern of the Romanesque basilica, about half occupied, in the presence of Frank-Walter Steinmeier, were filled to a large extent with guests of honor from politics and business.
Guido Holze
Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.
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In addition to the hygiene measures associated with all kinds of formalities, there were also special safety precautions with bag checks and police officers who inspected various admission wristbands.
The visitors waiting in queues and later leaving in orderly groups were obviously prepared for all this and had planned a lot of time for the two-hour concert with speeches but without a Riesling break - especially since many of them still crossed the recently fully closed Salzbachtal bridge on the way there Had to bypass Autobahn 66.
Almost 100,000 cards sold
The fact that concertgoers are ready to take on all of this and that only 25,000 of a total of 120,000 festival tickets are already on sale, testifies to the great hunger for music after the long waiver phase and the complete cancellation of the Rheingau Music Festival last summer. Thanks to the help from the festival rescue fund of the State of Hesse in the amount of half a million euros, and since many ticket buyers forego ticket refunds, the festival, which has existed since 1987 and is still run by the founding director Michael Herrmann, has had its worst crisis to date with additional borrowing survived. Because the total budget, which remains constant at around eight million euros, will be financed in roughly equal parts by sponsorship money and ticket sales again this year,supplemented only by a minimal state grant.
The festival is thus doomed to success, which is reflected in popular programs with popular standard works. An idea such as beach chair concerts with jazz and pop stars in the Wiesbaden football station contributes to this, but also the sensational new building of a mobile, pandemic-friendly and acoustically high-quality chamber music hall at Schloss Johannisberg, which under normal conditions offers 1,100 seats. This Fürst von Metternich concert cube, partly funded by the “Neustart Kultur” program, can be dismantled and rebuilt elsewhere within four weeks. At the same time, the festival, known for its good organization, spared no expense or effort to set up cooperating corona test stations at ten different locations in the Rhine-Main region,in which festival visitors can give preference to testing and the results can be digitally linked to the admission ticket.
In any case, the atmosphere of the opening evening, despite all the restrictions, including the recording by the Hessischer Rundfunk, exuded some of the glamor and upscale community feeling that is needed for the “New Start Culture”, which Steinmeier also called so important. The Frankfurt Opera and the Hessian State Theaters in Darmstadt and Wiesbaden had not been granted a similar effect two weeks earlier when they resumed performance shortly before the end of the season and the halls had to remain eerily empty.
The Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, which, unlike the stage orchestras, was able to rehearse and stream programs at a high level during the lockdown in the Frankfurt broadcasting hall, was now the best guarantee for a musically gripping experience with a large orchestral effect. The reduced string line-up unfolded a full sound in the strong hall of the basilica, on par with the wind instruments.
For the Colombian-Austrian chief conductor Andrés Orozco-Estrada, who will be transferring to the Vienna Symphony Orchestra in the same role for the next season, this was a tailor-made walk after he had given his official farewell concert a few days earlier at the Alte Oper. He used the seven years in Frankfurt to further develop his standard repertoire - including the Beethoven symphony cycle. In addition, as a charming conversationalist at new formats for concert introductions and earlier mass events such as the open-air concert on the Main, he has deservedly gained broad audiences.
Orozco-Estrada has always kept the musical level high. This was also shown when he and the outstanding soloist Augustin Hadelich made the Violin Concerto in D minor, Op. 47 by Jean Sibelius seem like a continuous, great narrative. This was largely based on Hadelich, who led into the depths with the lonely melody right at the beginning and from then on coherently derived all virtuoso passages and passions with rousing increases. His powerful Guarneri sounded sonorous in the lower registers.
Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 107, the “Reformation Symphony”, was a perfect homage to the reformer and Augustinian monk Martin Luther in the basilica of the former Cistercian abbey: bright, clear and simple, with skilful transitions, but also energetic and sharply accentuated, in the polyphony and the chorale "A strong castle is our God", evoking the power of tradition. Hopefully it can help the festival as well as the classical cultural scene as a whole.