How to start with this very special and unusual project!
First of all, this tour was related to the MCO Academy, meaning that we welcomed students studying in Australia, England, Colombia, and Germany, who passed the audition to join the orchestra. For that, a few MCO musicians came to Dortmund two days before the start of rehearsals to coach.
Each musician was responsible for working with a group, so in my case, as a bassoon player, I was put in charge of the woodwind section. I personally found it very interesting because only few years ago I could have been in their situation as a student. Which was also why it was important to me to work with them, to share my experiences, and to try to help them in the early part of their musical life by giving advice or even just by talking with them.
Thankfully they all came well prepared and we covered sectionals, audition training plus individual lessons. I even asked them to take my seat and conduct the group, so they didn’t only focus on their own part, but could also experiment with how to lead a rehearsal.
At the start of this tour, the MCO also had its own concert with Sergei Babayan and Daniil Trifonov, playing two Mozart concertos for two pianos. The orchestra was excited to work with them, since the last time we worked with Daniil was on the recording of his Chopin Evocations CD. Unfortunately our busy schedules meant we just had one rehearsal to run the pieces through with only one concert on that same day, and without a conductor. Quite a challenge already.
That was day three. On the fourth day, we started the tutti rehearsals with all the MCO musicians and academists, and on this program, there was A LOT of different pieces to cover, including Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, Ligeti’s Violin Concerto, Initiale by Boulez, Purcell’s Fantasia Upon One Note, Mozart’s Fourth Violin Concerto…
Shapeshifters was going to be a brand new experience for the public and for the musicians, with pieces from different periods taking over all the space in the concert hall, with light changes and ropes tied to the balconies, and the orchestra playing as a whole and also in smaller groups, improvising, whispering, shouting, singing, sitting, standing, playing the ocarina, imitating monkeys and getting crazy on stage making body and vocal noises… all this in the same "concert".
We even had to do karate! The whole orchestra took lessons throughout the week with the help of a professional instructor. This was going to be the beginning of the concerts, when everyone entered in silence, all dressed in white, barefoot, surrounding the public and facing each other doing the karate. Surprising indeed, especially when you think about a normal classical concert.
Obviously we all had to be very serious (and we were mostly), but sometimes there were moments when people just couldn't avoid laughing or dancing the macarena instead of doing the moves, the moments when you just let it go and your child’s spirit comes back.
On top of all of this, we also had to focus on the music, which was not easy because of how little time we had to rehearse. And it was not easy repertoire, for example in the last piece of the concert, the finale of Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra. Even with a conductor, this would normally be a huge challenge already.
