Germany Carl Flesch International Competition – Concertos Round: 16 candidates (violin, viola, cello, double-bass), Philharmonie Baden-Baden / Heiko Mathias Förster (conductor). Weinbrennersaal, Kurhaus Baden-Baden, 21-22.7.2023. (LV)
On the evenings of 21 and 22 July, sixteen finalists aged 11-29, chosen from thirty international participants from fifteen countries, played in the concertos round of the Carl Flesch International Competition, held under the auspices of the Carl Flesch Academy. The Philharmonie Baden-Baden and conductor Heiko Mathias Förster had rehearsed with each finalist for twenty minutes. For the first time, the performances were to be recorded by a professional videographer for the contestants’ use in improving their skills and adding material to their press kits. For some of them, this was the first time they had played even one movement of a concerto with a professional orchestra.
For the orchestra, it represented an investment in the future. The partnership between the Philharmonie’s manager, Arndt Joosten, and the Academy’s new artistic director, Kirill Troussov, blended their strengths in a unique classical music enclave: a laboratory for excellence at which prizes and scholarships totaling more than €20,000 were awarded, and including solo performances with the Philharmonie.
At the awards ceremony, the Carl Flesch Prize was given to violinist Leonhard Baumgartner for his performance of Robert Schumann’s Fantasie in C major, Op.131. Leo, as his friends call him, had nailed everything technically as his body inscribed all sorts of angles, and was intimately involved in the duets with winds and the solo cello. He and the orchestra built the climax up together through the overflow of Schumann’s lyrical emotion. His cadenza showed superb rhetorical flair and flow, and his phrasings of the last arpeggios were pure poetry. The conductor later told me that Leo, who was a clear audience favorite, had also been the orchestra’s choice: ‘Passion’, he explained.
Violinist Elias David Moncado at 22 won second prize, the Werner Stiefel Prize. His first movement of Tchaikovsky’s Concerto in D major, Op.35, opened with the elegance and gravitas of a great master. He rolled out the runs like magic carpets, and his command and integrity of line was attuned to the orchestra and conductor. He projected the cadenza’s impossible high notes and harmonics with a pallet of dizzying colors to which the flute responded like a bird, and his restrained final statement of the theme was sublime.
In the last two magical movements of Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No.2 in G minor, Op.63. Keila Wakao visibly felt every bar of irony and beauty, with her heart magnificently on her sleeve and won the third prize – the Stennebrüggen-Preis.
There were lots of other highlights. Sara Isabelle Ispas broke hearts with the last two movements of Sibelius’s Concerto in D minor, Op.47, and Yuki Sernio was broad, romantic and sweet in Chausson’s Poème, Op.25. Boha Moon took all sorts of acrobatic chances with the last movement of Paganini’s Violin Concerto No.1, Op.6. Felicitas Schiffner would take home a Brahms Prize for her broad, generous first movement of Brahms’s Concerto in D major, Op.77.
Notable among the other strings were cellist La La in the first movement of Haydn’s Cello Concerto No.2 in D major. She took it at a gracious tempo, and played faultlessly with lots of colors and exciting flow, and with her own highly imaginative cadenza. Cellist Annabel Hauk played the Allegro molto of Elgar’s Concerto in E minor, Op.85, at a whirlwind pace; her use of silence at the end of the Adagio was deeply humbling, and there was a long silence in the hall before the roar of applause.
Two double bassists played appealing, untroubled music by a composing virtuoso. Both Julian Schlootz and Lidong He did the second movement of Giovanni Bottesini’s Double Bass Concerto No.2 in G minor, sweetly and shyly like double basses in love, and accompanied by the orchestra’s double basses pizzicato until the final bar.
One of the changes the Academy made this year was to move its headquarters and dormitories a short bus ride away from the bright lights of Baden-Baden to Kloster Lichtenthal, a working monastery that serves as a retreat for reflection and work by individuals and groups. The location is literally within walking distance of the houses of both Brahms and Clara Schumann. The vibes are good. The simple rooms, meals and informal attitudes seemed to encourage collegiality. When I congratulated Leo on the Carl Flesch Prize, he said, ‘We were all winners’.
Besides the finalists’ dreams, there were those of the faculty and Academy of seeing their students putting practice into reality on stage. Violinist Pierre Amoyal, violist Diemut Poppen, cellist Istvan Várdai, double bassist Janne Saksala and Troussov put passion and care into master classes, founded in their expertise and love of the great Romantic tradition, where mastering the music’s flow is sometimes achieved by seeking larger visions and structures. They had a brilliant roster of rehearsal pianists. Förster, the Philharmonie’s conductor, worked hard with the soloists at the rehearsals and spent coaching time at the monastery.
Leo Baumgartner did not have much time to celebrate. After the awards ceremony that Sunday night, he and his mother had to catch an overnight train to Vienna where he would stop at home for two hours, pack his bags and take off on his own for the first time. He was about to spend several weeks in Israel, living on a kibbutz and taking master classes from Vadim Gluzman and other top teachers. Everyone else at the Academy would have left the monastery by the following day.
Laurence Vittes