Conductor Andrés Orozco-Estrada: With a lot of feeling

At the Frankfurt airport, met Andrés Orozco-Estrada and Stephan Pauly already about a month ago randomly on the common way to Vienna. The chief conductor of the hr Symphony orchestra is busy for the upcoming season in Frankfurt, he goes to the season 2021/22 in the same function to the Wiener Symphoniker, the head of the Old Opera takes over meanwhile, after this summer break, the artistic Director of the society of friends of music in Vienna. To Pauly, then, is for the building of the Musikverein, along with the famous Golden hall in charge of a principal facility of the Wiener Symphoniker game. In fact, they had already talked about some of the ideas for the series and possible soloists, says Andrés Orozco-Estrada, who came with 20 years, from Colombia to study at the Vienna Academy of music, for a long time with his family in the metropolis on the Danube lives, and even an Austrian passport.

Guido Holze

editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

F. A. Z.

as former chief conductor of the Vienna Tonkünstler orchestra, Orozco-Estrada knows the music city as such but as the “cave of the lion”, from the inside out and know the differences to Frankfurt. The audience, the musicians and all the comrades he had here is always very open and receptive to innovation experienced: “You dare to go here, other things,” says the Viennese-by-choice. As a typical German, he feels that the authorities would be questioned. The musicians know sometimes like to know why you should be this or that way or the other quite differently than in America, where he had been confronted as the chief conductor of the Houston Symphony Orchestra, yet never with such questions, as Orozco-Estrada insured. In Vienna he made as a young conductor, however, other experience: As he had asked in a Bruckner Symphony, the bugler to play a little quieter, they would have refused at first simply with the Argument that it was always been played loud, so to speak, since during the composer’s lifetime.

to recognize The different traditions of the orchestra in terms of the sound and the repertoire, to maintain and develop, Orozco-Estrada for one of the most important tasks of a chief conductor. To be Frankfurter’s predecessor, Paavo Järvi have him handed over to the hr-Symphony orchestra in 2014, however, already at a very high level and him in the only prior conversation said: “you can make with this orchestra, what you want.” His designated successor, Alain Altinoglu he could say to the soon-also, you only want to add the addition: “You just have to know exactly what you want,” says Orozco-Estrada.

Confidence during corona

of particular concern to him to have been in the past seven years, to convey by direct communication in the rehearsals and in the concerts “of human warmth and closeness,” and “to the emotional States of the music in the foreground, with a lot of feeling”. With the new Format of the “Spotlight”, in which he explains each work with sound samples, he has often so good, that the hearts of many listeners zuflogen is the only way. The same was true for the summer Open-Air concert by the hr Symphony orchestra in front of 20,000 audience at the Weseler Werft. In the previous year, been managed by Altinoglu, must be this classical music event of this year, of course, as well as the Rheingau music Festival. Its traditional concert in the Basilica of Eberbach monastery has designed the hr-Symphony orchestra last weekend, under Orozco-Estrada’s leadership with the Violin soloist Lisa Batiashvili, who should be in the Rheingau, “Artist in Residence”, as the live televised benefit gala without an audience in favor of the Foundation of the festival.

Rehearsed the small orchestra for that, and also for its well-accepted Streaming services now often back in the transmitter room. Concerts with Distance as in the Opera or in the state of theatres in the Region, no longer will there be in this already soon ended season. He hope now to have a beautiful next season, is Orozco-Estrada confident. Made up, among others, originally scheduled for may performance of the ninth Symphony of Gustav Mahler and to the farewell of the chief conductor in June of 2021 will be in December, the symphonic poem “Thus spoke Zarathustra” by Richard Strauss, both composers with whom he has an old Tradition for the hr-Symphony orchestra a lot.