From the press

“Classical, Mongolian and Latin combined”.

Concert Days Winnenden: The Orchestra of Cultures mixes familiar and foreign sounds and songs in a surprising way

By our colleague Christoph Rothfuß ( Winnender Zeitung )

It was a colorful evening of encounters – touching and fascinating. The “Orchestra of Cultures” has offered “Home for All” in the Hermann Schwab Hall, has created an inspired and inspiring concert full of surprises.

Is there still room for exoticism in a globalized world? What values do we use to define home as inhabitants of the global village, and are these values universal?

The “Orchestra of Cultures” is the only symphony orchestra in the world that brings together instruments from the most diverse ethnic regions; it is a great musical integration project. It drew audiences in droves, and the great expectation was more than met.

A giant with didgeridoo strides through the rows of listeners

A tall slender man strode from the back through the central aisle into the hall, playing a didgeridoo and circling it over the heads of the audience again and again – what a creative individual introduction to a concert program. And exactly these two attributes “creative” and “individual” describe best what was offered to the Winnenden audience: It started with the musicians’ clothing, their musical self-image and, of course, in the selection of the pieces performed, from the “Swabian Railway” to the Mongolian horse race.

Conductor Adrian Werum is a musical jack of all trades

Conductor Adrian Werum brought it all together, channeled and moderated this exuberant diversity, and presented himself as a musical jack-of-all-trades: not only did he compose or arrange most of the pieces for his orchestra, he occasionally took the microphone to sing himself, or rushed to the grand piano to contribute sensitive piano sounds. The whole evening was atmospherically very dense, cleverly alternating dreamy passages with wild, lashing ones. In the latter, the large percussion fraction came ear-catchingly to the fore: Classical, Indian, Latin and Oriental are united here, burning off a veritable firework of complicated rhythms here and there. Again and again, it’s the climaxes, layered with the utmost care and stretching over a long distance, that draw you in, the music coming closer and closer.

A goosebump duet between singer and flute developed into a raging lament. Then a Kurdish guitarist and singer sat down on the stage ramp and sang a deeply melancholic song from his homeland. A highlight of the concert was the crazy fast “Mongolian Horse Race”, played on the Morin Khu- ur, a Mongolian horse-head fiddle.

As a surprise guest, Jay Alexander sang German folk songs with his warm, well-timbrated voice. His father is Pakistani and his mother is a Black Forest girl, and he sang of the meadow ground and his home house.

One went home enriched and gifted.

Adrian Werum studied piano, conducting and composition in Mainz and Vienna and founded the “Orchestra of Cultures” in 2010, which he has been leading ever since. He works regularly for musicals and is an arranger for numerous artists. For the Orchestra of Cultures, he completely recomposed the melody of the Hunter from Kurpfalz and that of the “Schwäb’sche Eisebahn”, mixing in a lot of Africa, Asia and Latin America, so that they came across like tuned and colorfully painted old-timers.