BOXES 176-177: SSO Tour, Part 1.

This is the Courtyard (Hof) of Heidelberg Castle: a complex of medieval and Renaissance architecture with Victorian-era restorations. My photo doesn't show how the space could have had room for an orchestra, chorus and seats for an audience, but it did, and on a warm June evening in 1989 it was easily the most awesome setting I had ever performed in.

The Sheboygan Symphony Orchestra's music director, Manuel Prestamo, had been working with city leaders and the local Chapter of People to People International to make the orchestra's first tour a reality. Germany was the most likely destination, considering Sheboygan's historically German-majority population and its close ties with its Sister City of Esslingen, plus the fact that local wind bands had done summer tours there. Eventually an itinerary was created for June 1989: the SSO would fly to Zurich and bus to the Austrian Alpine town of Ehrwald for their first concert, then to Esslingen for a couple of concerts, Heidelberg and vicinity for several more, and finally Marburg before returning to Zurich for the flight back to O'Hare.

A clarinetist in the SSO since 1981, I was of course extremely excited to be part of the tour. Since ONEMOREBOXOFSLIDES has always been centered on my stash of slide photographs, I'll need to leave out lots of details about the trip that I'll be glad to share with you in person or though comments at the end of this post. Another caveat: although I'm satisfied by a number of my slides of places, most of my 'candid' shots of my fellow musicians are far inferior to what a professional photographer documenting the trip could have offered. I include them here (except for the very worst) with a mind to providing a 'history' of what I saw during the trip.

My first photos of the trip were taken on the bus as we rode past Lake Constance and into the Tyrolian Alps of Austria, where the views became spectacular and the curving roads a bit breathtaking:

(The fourth photo is of violinists Lucy Beenen and Peg Pipping; but I won't try to identify everybody in every picture.) The first concert, in Ehrwald, didn't happen, for a somewhat comical reason. There was no hotel in Ehrwald big enough to house the whole entourage (52 players, our conductor and quite a few significant others--probably 80-some people, enough for two tour buses), so our travel agent booked a hotel in the nearby town of Reutte. But the elders of Ehrwald were offended by our giving our tourist dollars to Reutte while using their civic hall just for the concert, and so they canceled the event. We decided to keep our itinerary, which made the players happy: now while still seeing a beautiful corner of Austria, we didn't have to give a jetlagged performance but could squeeze in an extra rehearsal for the Germany concerts. Here are the musicians arriving at the Hotel Goldener Hirsch (Golden Stag):

Reutte turned out to be a handsome town, with painted buildings situated below high mountains:

Our itinerary included optional side trips (probably for an extra fee) during our free mornings or afternoons, and most of us took the first one the next morning: the buses took us back into Germany to see Neuschwanstein, the Bavarian King Ludwig II's Disneylandish castle. Here we are gathering at the entranceway. That's Arnie Gesch, our orchestra manager and string bassist, in the left foreground, and I think our Dutch tour guide, Kaes, at the farthest right.

After the tour I caught this fuller view of the castle:

I see that I took photos from the exact spot where I took some on my first visit to Neuschwanstein, 15 years earlier. (See BOXES 53-55.)

More views in other directions:

A couple of our travelers ("orchestra husbands," I think) were pretty serious about their photography. Meanwhile, I found a new perspective on Neuschwanstein: looking up from a riverbed below the castle. I can't ID the guys in the last photo, but that looks like Curt Hancock in the one before it.

Curt was interested in railroads, and back in Reutte we visited the trainyard:

That evening after dinner the hotel had the dining room cleared to help us set up for a rehearsal:

The next morning we departed Austria and the Alps . . .

. . . and headed northwesterly toward Esslingen. We made one sightseeing stop along the way, at Hohenzollern Castle, which truly looks like a fairytale castle atop its mountain:

The Hohenzollern family had a residence up there since the 11th Century, but it was destroyed a number of times before the present palace was built in the mid-1800s (when a Prussian branch of the family would soon be emperors of the new Germany). We got a tour of the interior:

The views from the parapets, as you could easily guess, were grand. In the first photo below the crowd is mostly SSO players, including a couple of 'ringers' in the right foreground. (We needed to invite some Milwaukee musicians to replace some regular SSO players who couldn't join us; I believe those two were named Kermit and Carole, bassoonist and flutist.) The second shot is of Ellen Luebke (you've seen her in several previous posts), who played French horn.

In Esslingen most of us stayed with host families. I (along with a viola player) was lucky to be housed by Herr and Frau Hermann, who lived above their bakery. Below, you see the bakery (photo taken on a later rainier day) and Frau Hermann and her assistant in the store. For breakfast each day we were invited to come down to the bakery to pick out whatever we liked to have with our coffee.

On our first evening the Hermanns took us out to dinner in a great location: the Dicker Turm (the Thick Tower) of the Burg (fortress) built on the edge of the old city, with vineyards on the slope:

The morning after our arrival in Esslingen we were given a walking tour of the medieval center of town with its half-timbered houses:

That evening we were to perform not in Esslingen itself but the neighboring town of Kirchheim. We were bused out to their Stadthalle (civic concert hall), part of a larger complex that included a shopping center, for a late-afternoon warm-up/rehearsal.

I took some photos of the theatre itself and of us rehearsing:

We were given a supper at a location on the other side of the old town, and then had the pleasure of walking back to the Stadthalle through Kirchheim's own restored medieval district:

Here's the program handed out to our Kirchheim audience, along with a list of what we played on our trip: all-American music except for our honoring our German audiences with a Beethoven overture.

The next evening was our Esslingen concert, but the day was free, and I met up with my Sheboygan friend Greg (see BOXES 136-137) and his wife, Sue; Greg was working as a translator/interpreter for the Army and was stationed in southern Germany. They had a car, and we took a drive to the nearby university town of Tübingen. In the following photos you see the gate to Tübingen Castle, now part of the University; the old City Hall; and the River Neckar in the University district:

I didn't take photos of the concert hall in Esslingen that night, but I have plenty of the next places we played, in and around our next destination, Heidelberg. When we left Esslingen I wasn't on one of the buses, because Greg and Sue gave me a ride in their car. The next photo shows our first view of Heidelberg, from across the Neckar, with a glimpse of the mostly ruined Castle on the hillside to the left:

Here is a more famous "postcard" view of Heidelberg from across its famous bridge:

And here are four more photos taken from more or less the same spot with my zoom lens:

The Castle ruins tower over the town and an extensive park area:

I explored the park and parts of the castle with Greg and Sue:

Here's a clearer photo of my friends, plus views of other parts of the park and of the town seen from the parapets:

At this point I'm about halfway through my slides of the SSO tour, so I'll save the rest for a second post.