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Today is:28 Apr, 2025 The selected date: 28 Apr, 2025 |
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Report from the Preparatory Workshops for the Performance of Gustav Mahler's Symphony of a Thousand in Gliwice, Poland
After receiving an invitation from the Silesian Philharmonic to participate in the "Symphony of a Thousand" project, we embarked on months of both organizational and artistic preparations. The organizational aspect included recruiting participants, preparing comprehensive information for them, securing funding (a modest sixty-some thousand zlotys), finding participants from Germany and host families for them, as well as meticulously arranging venue rentals, catering, sheet music, and all the other logistical details that typically go unnoticed and unappreciated due to their lack of glamour. By some miracle, on March 5, everything was ready, and we awaited our first meeting the next day. In the final moments, a few choir members had to drop out due to personal reasons, leaving us with a final count of 47 singers, plus our conductor (the wonderful Łukasz Łoboda) and accompanist (the equally wonderful Daniel Strządała).
The workshops commenced with a lecture by Dr. Jarosław Wolanin, conductor of the Silesian Philharmonic Choir, on German stage pronunciation in the piece we were about to work on. The Symphony of a Thousand consists of two parts: the first in Latin and the second in German (the final scene of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust). We then split into sectional rehearsals (Aleksandra Wójcik led the sopranos, Magdalena Nogańska the altos, Łukasz Łoboda the tenors, and Jacek Gałuszka the basses) and read through the entire score. On Saturday, we began assembling the piece in tutti rehearsals, continuing on Sunday. In the end, our goal of uniting the second choir was achieved, but this article is about something more.
For me, the most important aspect of these workshops is the social dimension. I come from the old school of Prof. Jan Szyrocki, and one of the most significant events in my life was participating in the Polish-German Choral Academy "In Terra Pax" in Międzyzdroje, which has always demonstrated how beautifully people can connect through music.
Against the backdrop of Mahler's challenging yet beautiful music (if only it were transposed a third lower! ;)), heartwarming things happened during the workshops. It was an intergenerational meeting (we didn't ask participants' ages, but they ranged from their twenties to their seventies). It was also a meeting of different countries and regions: we, as the hosts in Gliwice, welcomed people from Warsaw, Krakow, Toruń, and other Polish cities, as well as choir members from Bonn, Wuppertal, and the small town of Rabenau in Hesse, Germany. Even more remarkably, it was an interspecies gathering! Alongside two human participants came a beautiful, exceptionally gentle and well-behaved Doberman, who, with the school's approval, didn't have to stay alone in a hotel during its owners' absence, as the music school turned out to be dog-friendly (as were most of our workshop singers).
Each of us has our own story from these workshops, but we also share common memories—like the spontaneous farewell scene for some of our German guests, to whom we sang Time to Say Goodbye, or the (/facepalm) decision to sing Hallelujah from Messiah DURING A BREAK AFTER THREE DAYS OF SINGING. Naturally, this was done from collective memory, with everyone contributing what they recalled from the score. I don't know who initiated it (perhaps Daniel Strządała?), but people gradually joined in, and by the second half of the piece, we were all singing together. Mind you, this was a group that had met for the first time just days earlier, yet apparently, everyone had extensive choral experience! ;)
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