Cornerstone No. 194, page 12
My experience with GMJO
Last August, I had the chance to play in the Gustav Mahler JugendOrchester.
The orchestra was founded by Claudio Abbado in 1986/87. It is today regarded
as one of the world’s leading youth orchestras. Auditions take place each year
in several cities of Europe in order to select the candidates from an average of
2000 applicants. The candidates are selected for 2 tours (Easter and Summer),
and have to take the audition again if they want to play the following year with
the orchestra.
I did not play on the Easter tour as I was busy finishing my master papers and
exams. However, I am lucky and proud to have been part of the Summer Tour
2018.
The tour repertoire was quite intense, with Tchaikovsky’s 6th symphony,
Mahler’s 5th symphony, Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, Cello concertos by Dvorak
and Shostakovich with Gautier Capuçon, Debussy’s “Prélude à l’après-midi d’un
Faune”, Webern’s “In Sommerwind”, and Verdi’s opening to “La force du
Destin”. Lorenzo Viotti was our conductor for this tour.
Rehearsals started beginning of August. It was very hard at first. For several
days all we had were sectional rehearsals, 8 hours of it per day. Considering the
difficulty of the repertoire, most of us had to practice an extra 2 hours outside
rehearsal hours to get to the level of the rest of the orchestra. I was counting
the days and wondering why I had wanted to take part in such an experience
because keeping that kind of rhythm was very difficult.
All of that took place in Pordenone, a small city outside of Venice.
However, things started to look brighter when we moved to Bolzano the
following week. Our first concert was approaching, finally, and the tutti
rehearsals were a lot more stimulating than the sectionals. Also, we finally got
to meet our conductor for the
tour, Lorenzo Viotti.
Our first concert was quite a
success, I believe everyone was
happy to perform. From then on,
we started the actual tour, going
to Salzburg, Prague, Amsterdam,
Hamburg, Dresden, and back to
Pordenone. We were lucky
enough to play in beautiful
concert
halls
such
as
Concertgebouw
(Amsterdam),
and Elbphilharmonie (Hamburg).
We varied the programme quite
a lot, which made it sometimes