When taking a photo in the sunshine, two similar self-tinting glasses models Michael Herrmann and Raimund Trenkler cause the same problems: They don't want to look too cool.
And they certainly don't want to see the world in black.
But the two most influential music managers in the Rhine-Main area have much more in common than their small appearance.
They have known and valued each other since 1993, when Trenkler founded the Kronberg Academy and came to Herrmann's inaugural visit in the Rheingau, where he had launched the Rheingau Music Festival six years earlier: "He correctly registered the Academy here," recalls Herrmann and laughs.
Guido Holze
Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.
Follow I follow
Now the 77-year-old founding director of the festival has come to Kronberg to the chairman of the Kronberg Academy Foundation, who is 18 years his junior, to promote a first joint project with him: the three-day “String Summit”, which takes place on the weekend of July 30th to August 1st at Rheingau Music Festival takes place in the Wiesbaden Kurhaus with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and soloists from the Kronberg Academy and for which tickets are still available.
"World selection of the best young string players"
It is surprising that this is the first collaboration between the festival in such a long time, which, according to Herrmann's wish, should serve to promote young talent from the outset with performance opportunities for young artists, and the now internationally highly regarded elite training center for strings. Additional opportunities now arise with the planned move of the Chamber Orchestra from London to Kronberg. Europe's leading chamber orchestra, alongside the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, will take its seat in the Academy's new Casals Forum, the construction of which is the size of an entire city quarter with a concert hall and an affiliated study and administration center next to the train station and should be completed by September 2022. The orchestra will rehearse and go on tour in Kronberg.
Herrmann and Trenkler have now initially developed the idea of having the orchestra, which was unable to make its Rheingau debut as planned due to the festival cancellation last year, perform with a concentrated program and 14 selected soloists from the Academy, mostly with young stars already performing internationally from ten countries, with a “world selection of the best young string players”, as Trenkler says.
No competitive thinking
The six-part program with a daily afternoon and evening concert offers an overview of three epochs, structured according to music history: Baroque (Bach, Telemann, Vivaldi), Classical (Mozart, Haydn) and Romantic (Brahms, Schumann). Trenkler hopes that without a conductor and under the direction of concertmaster Lorenza Borrani, there will be “lively communication” with the soloists in the various styles, based on the ideal of chamber music. “Learning from one another in an environment in which everyone is outstanding” is what he sees as an essential feature of the Kronberg “Cluster of Excellence”. It is thankful that alumni and students of the Academy have already received support at the Rheingau Music Festival, for example through the Rheingau Music Prize and the Lotto Prize. Young musicians need to be encouraged toadds Herrmann: "I know some who gave up because it was no longer financially feasible for them."
There is no competition between the “largest privately financed music festival in Europe” (Herrmann) and “the only privately financed university-level training facility” (Trenkler), assure the founders, who were both initially warned about the chances of their plans and who both know how difficult it is to acquire funds. Trenkler believes that their special connection is rooted in their shared history: "Pablo Casals was a role model and an inspirer for both of us, especially in the fact that, in his sense, art and humanity should be inextricably linked." Marta Casals Istomin, die Widow of the famous Catalan cellist, is one of the founding members of the Academy. And as Herrmann Casals, who no longer appeared in Spain and Germany in protest against fascism,Visited in the sixties at his self-founded festival in remote Prades in the Pyrenees, he made a momentous decision as a young man: "I want to do something like that too."
The cooperation between the festival and the academy is to be continued.
Herrmann and Trenkler agree on this.
They don't mention any concrete plans yet.
Trenkler smiles promisingly, but the festival could also find an “expansion option” in the Casals Forum in the future.
The string summit takes place from July 30th to August 1st in the Kurhaus Wiesbaden. Further information at
www.rheingau-musik-festival.de