March 2002 - Nr. 3
The Academy for Early Music
From Chamber Performance to World Stage
TWIG - When young musicians and students got together to make music on period instruments in a private apartment in East Berlin 20 years ago, they could hardly have hoped for the international acclaim they enjoy today. This year, the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin (Academy for Early Music) celebrates the 20th anniversary of its founding – and the success of a revolutionary music-making model.
At the Academy, autonomy is an important principle and democracy a golden rule – vital guidelines for an ensemble that frequently performs without a conductor. The players share the responsibility for creating striking, historically accurate performances by rotating the role of concertmaster among themselves and collectively making all artistic decisions. It was this attitude that raised eyebrows in the former East Germany. Playing music dug up from "original" works on a "democratic basis" did not fit with the socialist dictates of the day and was regarded with skepticism in the straight-jacketed culture.
The Academy musicians were drawn together by a collector of historical string instruments who made his collection available to the group. Although some of the violins, violas, and cellos were in catastrophic condition, the musicians learned to restore and play them. The Academy rehearsed in private apartments, attracting small but enthusiastic audiences. "People were not interested in the intellectualism of early music," Academy member Stephan Mai says, "they just wanted to experience enjoyment." The group found a home first at the Humbolt University in the then-divided capital city, and later, at the Constable Market Theater.
In 1985, the tercentennial of the great German composers Bach and Handel, the group began to attract the support of the GDR government. That year, the Academy released its first recording, and in the next year it was invited by West German Radio to attend a conference on early music, which lead to record contracts with western labels. Since 1994, the Academy has enjoyed an exclusive recording contract with a premiere early music label, harmonia mundi france, and has been distinguished with the German Grammophone and Cannes Classical awards. In 2000, the group was nominated for a Grammy award and in 2001 received widespread acclaim for its collaboration with the Italian mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli on a recording of operatic works by Christoph Willibald Gluck, an 18th-century German composer.
Today, the Academy is at home in the state opera house of Berlin, Unter den Linden, and has also been welcomed at jewels of the performance world: the Beaux Arts Hall in Brussels, the Paris Theatre des Champs-Elyseés in Paris and Wigmore Hall in London. Members of the group are professional musicians who are also members of five different Berlin orchestras – the Academy is their love, not their livelihood. To play in a leading chamber group and keep a full-time job with an international orchestra imposes certain restrictions, violinist Mai concedes. The group "only" stages four concert programs a year, while comparable groups hold an average of 30. This doesn’t seem to be a hardship for any of the Academy members, Mai says. "The Academy is our hobby. It gives us surpassing pleasure."
