East meets West in the music of the 2024 Campus Project

In late summer 2024, in the quiet town of Weikersheim, in south-central Germany, nearly 200 musicians ages 17 to 27 came together to make music together. The participants came from 41 different countries and included the entire National Youth Orchestra of Germany and the World Youth Choir.

Weikersheim happens to be the home of the German section of Jeunesses Musicales international, a global nongovernmental organization founded in 1945 that brings together young people from around the world to make music. The guiding hope is that people who make music together won't fight wars with each other.

The international summit of young musicians, part of DW's Campus Project, had been initially planned for the big Beethoven anniversary in 2020 and was postponed at the time due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Organized jointly by Beethovenfest Bonn and DW since 2001, the Campus Project has been bringing together young musicians from around the globe to take part in workshops and common rehearsals leading to compositions and concerts.

'Crazy' atmosphere and hard work

The musicians spent one week rehearsing the two pieces on the Campus Concert program: Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which premiered 200 years ago this year, and Tan Dun's "Choral Concerto: Nine," which the composer wrote specially for this event.

Tan Dun, who splits his time between Shanghai and New York, is a well-known contemporary Chinese-born American composer; he won an Oscar for the score of the 2000 Ang Lee movie "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." He was commissioned by various international institutions, including DW, to write a piece for the Campus Project. 

Tan Dun will also be conducting the young musicians in the concert. In Weikersheim he worked with the young musicians on both his new composition and Beethoven's Ninth.

When around 200 17-to-27-year-olds are invited to participate in rehearsals described in their schedule as "colorful evenings" in an orchestra party basement, the atmosphere definitely differs from the routine rehearsals of a professional orchestra.

"To all be here together, to hear so many different languages and, more than anything else, that we're all young — this is so cool! The vibe is just crazy!" gushed Natascha Botchway, a violinist in Germany's National Youth Orchestra. "We don't just feel good, we've got energy, we're so psyched about the music! You can sense this in the rehearsals."

Still, everyone was working hard, said Jörn Andresen, the project's assistant conductor. "The amount of knowledge that's been gained in just one week, the intelligent playing and singing that's taken place, the intensity — it's really impressive," he said.

A composer in dialogue with Beethoven

Tan Dun, who traveled from Shanghai to Weikersheim for the final stage of rehearsals, had only praise for the musicians. "These young people give me more than I can give them," he said. "And they're so peaceful!"

The art of coexisting peacefully with each other and the whole world — this is the central message of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony for Tan Dun. It's a message he wants to pass on.

"For me, Beethoven speaks to the spirit, he also speaks to nature and the universe — to air, rain, storms, water. My new piece is composed from the point of view of Mother Earth. Beethoven and Schiller said, 'All people will be brothers and sisters,' I would like to say that it's not just humans who are siblings. A cloud, or a storm in the woods, are also part of the family."

Tan Dun's 'Nine': Connecting East and West

Beethoven spent a long time looking for a text before landing on Friedrich Schiller's "Ode to Joy." Tan Dun also started his "Nine" journey with a text. He decided to use ancient Chinese poetry and combined words from three important Chinese poets with selected Schiller verses, creating a dialogue between East and West on the textual level. 

"Some lines come from the Taoist and Buddhist traditions," said the composer, who has spent his whole life at the cultural intersection of Asia and the West. Some words are only sounds, "nonsense," he explained. He sees silence as the greatest sound, even though he uses the same orchestration and choir size as Beethoven did in his time. "I use his instruments, but I develop a completely different language," he said.

"This work is totally different from anything I have played before," said violinist Botchway. "I think it has a lot of energy and emotion. It's also very dancey in certain places, and just very, very cool!" 

"People who go to a lot of new music concerts often have a certain 'reception problem': The movement is over by the time you understand a composer's language, and you don't get a second chance to hear it," said Andresen. "That'll be different in this piece. Despite all the complexity and nuance, it's very accessible for the listener."

Andresen hears the influence of Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana" or Igor Stravinsky's highly rhythmic works in Tan Dun's composition, but he said the contemporary composer and his work have a "very unique, special language." 

"The work is an exciting mix of far eastern religiosity and European-influenced orchestral sounds. A wonderful synthesis! There's a strong physicality to the music, too: tight rhythms, beautiful sound landscapes that really bloom."

The premiere of "Choral Concerto: Nine" took place on August 28 in Weikersheims, in the Tauberphilharmonie concert hall, where it was well-received.

Following performances in top venues including Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie and Amsterdam's Concertgebouw, the work's European tour will conclude on September 7 at the Beethoven Festival in Bonn. The concert will be streamed live on the DW Classical Music YouTube channel.

This article was originally written in German.