kneaded air

“Our boss isn’t there, we like that, because we know him close and love him from afar.” Does the wisdom from the 1950s hit actually apply to orchestras as well? Do they play differently when a guest stands in front of them instead of the usual manager?

Antonello Manacorda has been chief conductor of the Potsdam Chamber Academy for ten years and his style of powerplay has long since become second nature to the musicians, the urge of the maestro to energize every bar, to keep the energy flow in the ensemble constantly high.

Korsten works out the contrasting dramaturgy in a plastic way

Gérard Korsten conducts the concert in the Nikolaisaal on Saturday. Born in Pretoria in 1960, a trained violinist, like Manacorda, who also began his career as concertmaster in a symphony orchestra before deciding to become a conductor.

Korsten also likes it lively, likes to sharpen the musical lines, sometimes exaggerated, for the sake of interpretative clarity. But his technical means are more rustic than the manacordas: Korsten conducts without a baton, preferring to knead the air with both hands at the same time in order to clarify what he currently has in mind in terms of atmosphere.

This works perfectly with Carl Maria von Weber’s First Symphony. The composer was just twenty years old when he wrote the work, which is original in every respect. It disregards almost everything that was considered appropriate at the time, but instead shows that romantic double-facedness that would characterize his “Der Freischütz” 15 years later.

Korsten works out the contrasting dramaturgy in a plastic way, the constant alternation between light and shadow, major and minor, enthusiastic naivety and demonic menace. And the chamber academy follows him fiercely, lets the timbres shine, dances exuberantly folksy, trembles in the icy breath of nocturnal nightmares.

Korsten’s approach also leads to interesting results in Franz Schreker’s chamber symphony from 1916: This Art Nouveau music can easily be exaggerated into mannerisms, but the conductor prefers to emphasize the sensual, beguiling, colorful iridescence – like turning on a kaleidoscope, when new, fantastic formations are always in front of the eye of the beholder appear.

Beethoven’s Triple Concerto, on the other hand, is ill-fated: after the cellist Martin Löhr had to cancel due to illness, the Jean Paul Trio was able to find a replacement in Leonid Gorokhov, whose expressive cantilenas went well with the honey-golden violin tone of Ulf Schneider and the sparkling playing of the pianist Eckart Heiligers fit, but the soloists miss Beethoven’s intention by engaging in a dogged competition for brilliance instead of communicating wittily and calmly with one another as friends.

And because the Kammerakademie, driven by Korsten, also acts acoustically much too overdone, the Mozartian charm, the rococo-like gracefulness that is in this score is unfortunately completely lost in the general tumult on stage.