HNA / Werner Fritsch / transl. Maren Kallenberg


“Enthusiasm at the Kassel symphony orchestra with Anja Bihlmaier and the double bass player Ödön Rácz”

What music tells us
Enthusiasm at the Kassel symphony orchestra with Anja Bihlmaier and the double bass player Ödön Rácz
Generally one advises against travelling to Istanbul these days. On Monday though the audience of the symphony orchestra were in the middle of the „Big Bazar“ (Kapali Çarsi) of the Turkish metropolis. The correspondent composition of the composer and pianist Fazil Say (47), which premiered in 2016, was the opening of the oriental evening.
The piece elevates considerably above any oriental clichees with its artful instrumentation and moreover with its passages of wild and complex percussions. The state orchestra played with great impact and intensity under the conduction of the First Kapellmeister Anja Bihlmaier. An appealing contrast was the concert F sharp minor for double bass and orchestra of the composer and conductor Sergej Koussevitsky (1874-1951)….There was also a concert master to be celebrated in Nikolai Rimski-Korsakows’symphonic suite „Scheherazade“. First the composer captured the four movements programmatic titles but he withdrew them later. One did not need a program given how vividly Anja Bihlmaier and the state orchestra staged the music. Energetically the first harmonic movement started, beautiful cascades of wind sections and fine waltz tones passed by in the third movement.

Bihlmaier provided musical high tension, the state orchestra was in top form – and even the audience of the nearly sold out city hall expended during the final applause.