Kempten (DE) - Classix Festival

Bright and early at 7:30 we left from Hauptbahnhof Wien to Kempten, the oldest town in Germany, as we later found out. We arrived in the early afternoon in the beautiful old town of Kempten at "Hotel Fürstenhof" and had enough time to take a walk around, grab a bite, sit in the warm autumn sun, take a nap and gather strength for our soundcheck. Everything was in walking distance and though the beautiful theater was around the corner I made a little detour before I finally turned 'round at the right corner : ). The moment I walked into this theater I fell in love with the walls, the lights, the stage, the sound… What a beautiful place to play our favorite songs from Schubert, Schumann and Brahms. Also, especially for Classix Festival and to keep my promise to organizer Dr. Franz Tröger we included one standard and three songs from My Poet’s Love: Only The Girls, Where Begins The Night and Earnest Hour - all poems by Rainer Maria Rilke set to music by mathias rüegg. And it’s been quite a while since we played these songs - I think it must have been at least four years... Through the years we’ve kept playing together and through it we kept growing closer and closer as a band and these familiar songs suddenly felt completely new. What a wonderful feeling to re-discover familiar turf altogether. Thank you to the whole crew at Theater Kempten and Classix Festival - all the helping hands made us feel welcome from the start and our soundcheck felt more like an open rehearsal in which our favorite sound engineer Mr. T smoothly took care of our sound and monitoring on and offstage. It was an honor to meet Dr. Franz Tröger, the organizer and violin virtuoso Benjamin Schmid, the artistic director of the Festival. Thank you both for inviting us and giving us the chance to be part of marvelous Classix and play within these beautiful walls. During soundcheck mathias suggested that soloist Mario Rom on trumpet should background dance during my flute solo in Schubert’s „Nebensonnen“ - and he suprised us with quite some moves but unfortunately during the concert he went backstage when we played this song - but maybe he danced there, who knows! A wonderful and attentive audience welcomed us and we enjoyed every song on our journey through this evening. Ingrid rocked her Darabukka solo in „In my dreams I’ve been crying“, in Brahms’ „Heideröslein“ mathias played beautiful harmonies that kept evolving underneath the melody shining a different light on every chorus, Hans and I joined forces in In the morning and Mario shared his powerful lines in „Liebestreu“ and deeply moving stories in Earnest Hour. We played a little over time shared our songs and also laughs over the great quotes from Schumann and Brahms with the marvelous audience. As our first encore we played the standard we promised: Gershwin’s Someone to watch over me, then the cable started to give up and mathias and I played Schumann’s "Mondnacht" unplugged. The audience kept going and so I did too : ) and I closed this night with an a-capella version of Chaplin’s Smile. After the concert there was enough time to meet almost everyone in person - we had a wonderful evening, thank you to each and everyone who came out to listen to our „Lieder“ as songs with open-hearts, supported live music and shared this evening with us.

I could have sang all night, yours Lia

I made the mistake of passing the computer to mathias, who then wrote this ironic version of the Tourdiary, although some parts in their essence remain true. I did sell CDs barefoot and we really talked about the „Welser“ in Franz Welser-Möst’s name for most of the night before we all happily went to bed : ).

written by mathias rüegg on the train from Kempten to Vienna, 24th of September 15:23

Es gibt manche Orte, die nur schwer erreichbar sind, die man nur mit Verkehrsmitteln erreicht, die einen dazu nötigen, das Bett schon sehr früh zu verlassen. Das versetzt einen dann in so einen Schwebezustand, den man auch mit Dauermüdigkeit umschreiben könnte. Dieser Zustand begleitet einen dann den ganzen Tag, bis zum Beginn das Konzertes, aber soweit sind wir noch nicht. Jeder Ort hat einen Bahnhof, so auch Kempten. Und meist führt der Weg vom Bahnhof ins Hotel, und alles brav maskenverunstaltet, vorbildlich unterstützt von den orbrigkeitsferngesteuerten Bayern. Nur ich trage nie eine Aksme, weiss nicht mal genau, wie man dieses Wort schreibt. Ich bin befreit, was für ein Segen! Sie sollten dasselbe tun. Nachdem wir in den letzten acht Jahren sehr viel und sehr gewissenhaft geprobt haben und super eingespielt sind, können wir nun die Proben auf einen Minimum kurz vor dem Konzerte beschränken, selbst wenn es Stücke sind, die wir seit Jahren nicht mehr gespielt haben, wie z.B. die drei Stücke aus Poets’ Love. Neu dabei war diesmal, dass der jeweilige Solist, in diesem Fall Mario Rom, beim Flötensolo von Lia in Nebensonnen Backgroundausdruckstanz zum Besten geben muss. Leider fiel das dann beim Konzert aus, dafür war sonst fast alles schön, ausser meinen zwei Superverspieler am Ende von Sennin und am Anfang von Wasserflut. Das Publikum war begeistert und wir waren es ebenso. Julia hat nach dem Konzert barfuss viele CDs verkauft. Und dann gingen wir alle ins Gasthaus und diskutierten eine Stunde darüber, warum Franz Möst so "welsert"...Mario kann es ihnen gerne erklären. Und dann gingen wir alle glücklich ins Bett..