Many Happy Returns

3 June 2016
WRITTEN BY
Janina Rinck

Janina Rinck

Manager

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The last time I had been to Ferrara was in October 2014 – on my very first tour with the MCO, as an intern for Production and Communications. It was the first time I got to know the musicians better, and I came back with memories of the relaxed and cheerful atmosphere all over town, of some fantastic music from rehearsals and concerts in Teatro Comunale, and of long nights with the orchestra in their usual bars and restaurants.

Since then, I have started working as Communications Assistant at the MCO, which includes writing tour and concert descriptions for the MCO website. Amongst them, the Beethoven cycle with conductor Daniele Gatti was a recurring topic. Begun in January 2015, the cycle was now completed by a fourth tour to Turin, Ferrara, Bergamo, and Brescia, featuring Beethoven’s Eighth and Ninth Symphonies. When the Project Manager, Hélène, asked me if I wanted to assist her on this tour, I was more than happy to do so – if you’re not regularly travelling with the orchestra, every chance to experience first-hand what you’re actually working for is special. Having heard a lot from colleagues and musicians about Daniele Gatti’s work with the MCO and how different his idea of an orchestra sound was compared to the “usual” sound of the MCO, I was in anticipation of hearing the results in person.


The rehearsals took place in Teatro Comunale in Ferrara, a place closely connected to the MCO since their foundation, through Claudio Abbado. We spent most of the days in our provisional “out of the box” office and backstage, with short interludes like picking up our four soloists at the hotel, having an ice cream or a quick lunch in Umbrella Street. The arrival of over 60 singers from Orfeó Català and Cor de Cambra del Palau de la Música Catalana on the second day of rehearsals increased the liveliness backstage considerably. In only one tutti and one public general rehearsal, conductor, orchestra, soloists, and choir had to come together for the fourth movement of the Ninth Symphony.


Following rehearsals, the nights were spent in familiar places like Brindisi, Il Frantoio and – of course – Da Settimo, the MCO’s “home bar” in Ferrara since the beginning. One great thing about tours in Ferrara is that you always meet MCO people in these places. Weeks before the tour began, I got a message from a musician saying “Frantoio on 26th?” Said night drew over 30 MCO people to the osteria, where we had fantastic wine and, in my case, the local speciality cappelacci di zucca, pumpkin ravioli – just like in October 2014. I sat with a journalist and a film-maker who had joined us for the tour, and with violinist Geoff. He told us about how he came to this restaurant for the very first time, together with, and upon the recommendation of, Claudio Abbado, whose legacy is still very present all over town. We spoke about Ferrara as a residence for the orchestra, which provides an oasis of familiarity and safety in-between the stream of new places, new people and new impulses on tour. For me, coming back here for only the second time was still an occasion to reflect on what had happened and changed over the past year and a half.


After two days of rehearsals, the concert period began. This meant bus rides of three to four hours every morning, with people either sleeping, reading, listening to music or talking to each other. The long queues in overcrowded highway restaurants brought along opportunities to bond with fellow sufferers. Highways led through flat and dreary areas as well as green fields spotted with red poppies, and hills in different shades of rainy blue. (Yes, rain!) Bus ride in the morning, concert in the evening, bus ride in the morning, and so on … The only free half-day the musicians had was in Bergamo, which many used to walk up to Città Alta, the Upper Town.

The concerts led us to Turin for one night, back to Ferrara, then to Bergamo and Brescia. In contrast to the two-week Written on Skin tour in March, where I had assisted our other Project Manager Alena, and where one of my tasks was giving lighting cues for the half-scenic performance – quite the adrenaline rush! – I now had the different pleasure of leaving the cheerful pre-concert excitement backstage behind and enjoying the concert from the audience. Like in October 2014, my colleagues and I took Alice, the young daughter of a violist, with us to our box where she listened as intently as back then.


Hearing the same musicians play the same programme in four different venues four nights in a row showed something fairly obvious in fascinating clarity: the impact of acoustic conditions and of the personal state of mind of both musicians and audience on the overall concert experience. The four performances were entirely different every single time. The round and distant-sounding acoustics of the Auditorium Giovanni Agnelli in Turin, built in 1994, was in stark contrast to the relentlessly crisp, though exciting transparency of the 18th Century Teatro Comunale di Ferrara.

But also each night kept in store a different kind of tension onstage and in the audience. Together with Daniele Gatti’s flexible style of conducting, giving the many individuals in the orchestra a great amount of freedom while ever so often spurring the orchestra on, this made for an interpretation of Beethoven I hadn’t heard before. Very flexible in tempo, giving tender transitions the time they needed whilst avoiding over-dramatising certain passages. There were outright magical moments; when the whole orchestra started “dancing” gracefully in complete sync in the third movement of the Ninth Symphony, the lines of different sections smoothly intertwined, the woodwinds changed colours in a split second, the bassoon gracefully counterpointed the violas’ Ode to Joy theme in the fourth movement.

This tour stuck out in many ways, being not only the completion of the Beethoven cycle with Daniele Gatti, but also the starting point of his being Artistic Advisor of the MCO. Before the announcement was made official, this meant quite a workload for Communications – writing, translating and proofreading the press release, preparing the newsletter, updating all related texts accordingly etc. The relevance of this collaboration, for the orchestra as well as the conductor, was demonstrated at the after-concert celebration in Ferrara. Violinist Michiel handed over a poster of that night’s concert signed by the MCO musicians to Daniele Gatti as a token of their gratitude and anticipation of future collaborations, to be hung on the wall of Settimo’s next to the ones with Abbado and the MCO. Gatti was visibly touched. The icing on the cake was the choir’s surprise performance of a Catalan traditional song, Rossinyol by Antoni Pérez Moya. The experience of about 100 people lost in this beautiful song, while a spirited party was going on outside gave me goose bumps. Bella vita.


After a memorable last night in a great bar in Bergamo following the concert in Brescia, everyone flew home to different parts of Europe. New acquaintances had been made, between the MCO and the choir as well – inevitably captured with one particular singer’s smartphone camera –, and new memories had been created. In a few months I will start a new job, and I don’t know yet if I will go on another tour with the MCO, but I have a strong feeling that this “end” is yet another starting point of something, and that a lot worth looking back on will have happened by the time I return to Ferrara again.

P.S.: If you are into sweets and happen to be in Bergamo, go visit Pasticceria Balzer.

P.P.S.: If you happen to have the chance to visit a craft beer festival in Italy, don’t do it. Unless you’re not into beer.


Photos: Geoffroy Schied

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