Hamburger Instrumental-Wettbewerb
It's about music and not points
Do you have to be afraid of competitions? Does the jury have to look grim? Do you deserve a worse prize just because you have stage fright and come out gasping for breath? If you then laugh a little together with the jury and start again from the beginning, it will certainly work out. That's exactly what every musician has to learn: to stay cool and relaxed in extreme situations. We in the jury call this "becoming fit for the tropics" for concerts, competitions and auditions. Each of us on the jury has experienced this ourselves. Stage fright is a part of it - and only becomes solidified when people act as if it were something unusual.
Angelika has been directing the renowned Hamburg Instrumental Competition since 2013, together with Prof. Jacques Ammon since 2019. The competition was founded in the 1950s by composer and conductor Prof. Walter Gehlert and has been an important cultural institution for promoting young talent ever since. Every year, more than 400 children and young people from all over Germany and Europe enter the competition. For the first round of the competition, the children and young people submit videos of their pieces. A selection of the participants, who perform at the highest level, is then invited to perform in front of a jury of experts. Many of them are young students at music academies.
The prize winners perform in front of 2,000 listeners in the Great Hall of the Laeiszhalle Hamburg - at the Concert of the Children, which celebrates its 40th anniversary in 2023. The inventor of this special concert, Prof. Walter Gehlert, remembers: "The initial spark for me back then was Angelika. She had participated in the competition every year since the age of four and always won first prizes. I thought that such a highly gifted child had to be given the opportunity to play as a soloist, even in front of a large audience." Since 1983, more than 3,000 prize winners have had the opportunity to play in front of such a large audience and in such a familiar concert atmosphere: with a colorful concert grand piano, flowers mysteriously growing at the edge of the stage and a pudding fight afterwards. It's all about togetherness, playing together. Many prize-winners accompany other prize-winners at this concert, and at the grand finale they all play a piece together that Angelika arranges especially for the concert and in which guests such as Axel Zwingenberger, Rolf Zuckowski or even a beatboxer play along.
The competition is sponsored by the Haspa Music Foundation, the Oscar and Vera Ritter Foundation and the Pianohaus Trübger, each of which makes extraordinary special prizes possible. The Haspa Music Foundation regularly has master violins made by Hamburg violin maker Anneke Degen, which are then awarded to young talents. Together with Pianohaus Trübger, the special prize Young Pianists is awarded: selected prize winners in piano take part in master classes with Prof. Jacques Ammon. The Oscar and Vera Ritter Foundation sponsors the special prize Töne der Welt (Tones of the World), which is intended to encourage children and young people to apply with an instrument that is rather untypical for classical music. An acoustic contribution to more diversity with sounds ranging from the Bavarian alphorn to the Arabic oud and the Korean gayageum.