What might a retired surgeon from New York, a physicist from Geneva, a biotech executive from San Francisco and a dozen other people with equally diverse backgrounds and residences possibly have in common while they are spending ten days in a remote Alpine valley? The answer is simple. Participate in the AlpenKammerMusik Festival 2007 where professionals and amateurs play chamber music as one community.

AlpenKammerMusik’s ensemble in residence is called Camerata Pangaea. It would have been difficult to find a more appropriate name. Pangaea means “all the land” in Greek and it was the name of the gigantic supercontinent consisting of all of the Earth’s land masses 200 million years ago. Camerata Pangaea’s members, a group of brilliant professional musicians literally come from all corners of the globe. Claudia Ajmone-Marsan (violin) and Tanya Bannister (piano) from London, Stephen Buck (piano) and Suzanne Farrin (composer) from New York, Roland Glassl (viola) from Frankfurt, Guy Eshed (flute) from Tel Aviv and Trey Lee (violoncello) from Hong Kong. They were the coaches and we were the students. We were, nevertheless, a true community.

We met on a Friday in July at the Munich airport, and then a bus took us to the beautiful Lesachtal valley in which the picturesque Alpine community of Liesing provided the setting for the chamber music festival community to play and practice.

We were an odd looking group with cello and violin cases, tired after a long flight but full of anticipation. Strangers at that point. However, that feeling didn’t last long. As the hours and days went by, we became fast friends. The group consisted of 16 amateur musicians from all over the world; New York, Seattle, Washington D.C., the San Francisco Bay area, London, Geneva, Vienna, Hong Kong. All of us wanting to hone our skills, spend some intensive time playing music and learning from our faculty of young professional musicians already well-known on the international music scene.

We stayed in comfortable private homes, Bauernhauses with colorful flowers hanging from the balconies in the village which had not much more than a fantastic Musikakademie (any US music school would be proud of it), a church, a bank, a school and a restaurant.

The little village of Liesing had the right ingredients: amazing scenery, lush meadows, snowy peaks, a night sky with millions of bright stars and alpine air, so fresh you could bite into it.

Throughout the day (starting early in the morning) you could hear fragments of music floating out of the Musikakademie’s open windows. Music of Mozart, Shostakovich, Schumann, Haydn, mixed in the air with the sounds of nature; cows, birds, dogs, the humming of a tractor in the distance gathering hay. One night for hours thunder echoed through the valley and rain knocked on the roof of our typical Bauernhof. The background sounds of the waterfall completed this wonderful Alpine symphony orchestrated perfectly as if conducted by some invisible music director.

Every student was assigned to two chamber groups. We had rehearsals all day with time for individual practice, coaching and even some siesta. To arrange all this; the schedules, the lodging, the meals, the excursions, the concerts required months of elaborate preparations. AlpenKammerMusik’s associate directors, Elena Levina and Daniel Swartz saw to it that everything was running smoothly.

Sometimes late, after dinner we got together on the spur of the moment for some impromptu chamber music. Having our meals together gave us time to get to know everybody, socialize, exchange stories about our jobs (we all have a “real” one), music, travel. There was a wonderful camaraderie and new friendships were born. One day a crew from ORF came out, interviewed us and recorded rehearsals. That was pretty exciting!

On another day we went to Woerthersee and visited the house where Mahler worked on his compositions, among which, Symphony No. 4, my personal favorite. Of course, now this symphony will have a completely different meaning for me.

As guests of the Brahms Society, our faculty gave a concert in Poertschach which was enthusiastically received by the local audience. It was thrilling to walk around town and see posters about our group everywhere.

Playing chamber music is very intimate. You watch your partners, their eyes, their movements, the way they breathe, the way they raise their eyebrows and slowly you get to know the mannerisms of their playing. You depend on them, just as they depend on you. You are connected on a level that might not be possible through conversation. The music connects you in a special intimate way.

You want to do well, you don’t want to disappoint your partners, so you try to do your best. Every day you feel you are getting better, you practice more and amazingly you can play notes and passages you thought were impossible to play on your first day.

One of the highlights of the festival for me was the closing concert when we presented on stage the pieces we had practiced throughout the week. You could feel a quiet vibration in the air (which was exciting) but you could also feel the support of all the members of the group which had an extremely calming effect. When I was in the audience, I rooted for them and wanted them to play their best. When I was on stage, they rooted for me. From being strangers on the first day we grew to be close friends by the end of the festival.

I have been thinking about this ever since. Was it the music, was it the setting, was it the right mix of the participants? I guess it really does not matter what answer I come up with.

What counts is the experience, the memories, the friendships, another email with yet another photo or a “do- you-remember-story” like the one when (after the final concert) we all walked to a nearby meadow for a photo session going round and round the haystacks in concert attire. We had so much fun!

It was very hard to say good-bye to everyone and return to the real world. Now, all we have to do is wait until next summer and we’ll be back there again.

Ann M. Jona
August 2007

Ann Jona is an amateur cellist living in Redwood City, California and attended AlpenKammerMusik this summer.