Now there are eight challenging concerts to play in eight prestigious halls in eight cities and a lot more travel by bus, train and plane. There will be meetings with musicians in the resident orchestras in many of the cities, chamber-music performances, sightseeing tours, and a dinner on a boat in Prague, and of course countless individual and unpredictable adventures, events, encounters, and explorations of possibility.

The soul of the enterprise lies in the final work composer Gustav Mahler completed, his Ninth Symphony. Mahler worked on this massive work between 1908 and 1910, but the premiere did not occur until 1913 which was after his death. Even though more than a century of performance has passed, the symphony remains immensely difficult for conductors and orchestras alike, and it is not a piece most youth orchestras would dare to attempt. But it is a central work in the repertory of the BPYO’s founding music director Benjamin Zander. He first led it in Boston forty years ago and he estimates he’s since conducted on about 25 occasions; the BPYO played it in Symphony Hall to tumultuous ovations last March.

There will be ample opportunity to reflect on these works and the forthcoming further rehearsals and performances as they occur, not to mention on the thoughts and experiences of the young musicians as they develop. But for now, a bit of travelogue. 

Your blogger was in the largest group which flew on Lufthansa flights the first of which was on a very crowded and uncomfortable plane. My own seat backed on a wall, so it didn’t recline; the television screen was in Chinese and wouldn’t change without professional attention; for most of the flight the earphones delivered sound to only one ear. The flight crew tried to be helpful but had their work cut out for them; the dinner, chicken or pasta, was not edible, and if I had accidentally created the glutinous breakfast muffin, I would have been careful to avoid doing it again. 

Once we arrived in Berlin, the group travelled to its quiet hotel in the former East Berlin and assembled almost immediately for a rehearsal in one of the dining rooms that apparently doubles as a ballroom – there are mirror balls suspended from the ceiling. Although the space was crowded, the players were distant from the each other and it was hard for them to hear, so normal rehearsal was impossible, not that Zander is that interested in “normal” rehearsals. In addition the string bass players were having their awkward first meeting with their rental instruments, and it wasn’t going well. “Do you like your new instruments?” Zander asked to a cry of “no.”

But cries of “no” are not Zander’s style and he is seldom at a loss. He likes to respond to crisis by exclaiming “Isn’t it fascinating?” and in fact he found some fascinating things to do. At one point he instructed the players to close their music folders and put them on the floor and play the opening pages of the Mahler Ninth from memory – and they did, with astonishing security and considerable interpretive effect. Later he asked everyone to move from their traditional positions and sit or stand next to someone who played a different instrument. This changed the sound of the music because of the way it changed the way the players heard it.

A big day tomorrow. Some chamber music in the morning as well as meetings with players in Berlin’s Konzerthaus Orchestra and in the evening the first tour concert in Berlin’s Konzerthaus, built a century before World War I, nearly destroyed during World War II, and rebuilt beginning in 1977. Culture is always threated but it also always survives.

STAY TUNED FOR MORE STORIES FROM THE 2018 BPYO EUROPEAN TOUR and check out our account on smug mug where you can purchase prints from our European adventure!