DeutschThe joy of music and making music is at the center of our work. We want the singers, most of whom are employed and have a hard day's work behind them, to go home relaxed and happy after rehearsal. Despite all the necessary discipline, rehearsals should be as stress-free as possible. In this way, there is an almost cheerful atmosphere in our choir.
However, this does not mean that we do not attach great importance to high quality. It is our top priority, and it is the personal ambition of Jan Olberg, our choirmaster, as well as that of our singers, to keep improving and to turn a choir of amateur singers into a quasi-professional ensemble.
The focus is on beauty of sound, purity of tone and homogeneity of sound. In order to perfect them more and more, the choir conductors work together in a team of six.
Our professional vocal coaches Ricarda Gross-Khachaturian and Ines Muschka alternately offer a varied warm-up program before each choir rehearsal and are available to individual singers for individual vocal training during the rehearsal. Their work is closely coordinated with the choirmaster Jan Olberg and refers to the works in preparation. If a piece contains passages that are particularly difficult to realize in terms of sound, they are occasionally included in the general rehearsal work.
Two professional pianists, Ben Chruchley and Chris Cartner, support the singers as répétiteurs during rehearsals at the piano. Among other things, the ability to sight-read is also encouraged. Great importance is attached to this - but without stress. For more difficult pieces, male and female voices are split up, and separate rehearsals are held for the different registers.
In the full rehearsals, the focus is then on interpretative work in addition to honing the choir's sound. Jan Olberg attaches great importance to linguistic interpretation. He is convinced that music, and of course choral music in particular, is language at a higher level. This is why articulatory nuances also play a major role in expressing and emphasizing the message of certain passages of text in a special way. What sounds so simple is often not easy to realize in individual cases. In order to achieve a certain effect, we therefore often work intensively and over a long period of time on a single passage comprising just a few bars. Of course, we never lose sight of the big picture.
It is always a great challenge for any choir to switch back and forth between the different styles, such as baroque, classical, romantic or modern. Jan Olberg therefore always attaches particular importance to working out the particular tonal, articulatory and interpretational characteristics of each style, while conveying to the singers the joy of the diversity of the music.
Of course, this also corresponds to a targeted program planning, in which our choir member Gerd Belkius, also a musicologist, plays a major role. In addition to the main works of the classical repertoire, we therefore also regularly perform lesser-known works from the 18th and 19th centuries, but above all contemporary pieces or music from other cultures (see the program overview for past and coming years). This is often not an easy challenge for the singers. However, we are sure that this program design also means variety and enrichment and thus promotes the joy of music for our choir and our listeners.