At the age of ten, almost every day, the German composer Paul Lincke watched from the window of his house in the center of Berlin the parade of troops marching to the rhythm of military bands. One day, he simply decided to join in: "As soon as I heard the music booming, I announced to my mother that I was coming down. Leaping, I gained the street. I waited for the soldiers to approach and marched enthusiastically to the steady beat of the music toward the Unter den Linden station."
Regarded as the founder of Berlin operetta – just as Strauss Jr. was for Vienna, or Offenbach in Paris – the composer was born in Berlin in November 1866. As was to be expected, his first contact with music was in a band, that of the city of Wittenberge, where his mother sent him after finishing high school. There he played the bassoon, although he also learned violin and piano. But he did not pursue a career as a band musician. He would soon shine as a bassoonist and songwriter in various vaudeville theaters in his hometown. Later, as a mature musician, he served for two years at the Folies Bergère in Paris.
On his return, in 1899, he premiered his greatest success, the operetta Frau Luna (Lady Moon), which narrates a singular adventure: the story of a group of prominent Berliners who travel by hot-air balloon to the moon. Five years later, in 1904, he premiered a burlesque in two acts, Berliner Luft, to which belongs the homonymous march, today the unofficial anthem of Berlin, and which every year serves as the closing of the Berlin Philharmonic's performance on the Berlin open-air stage known as the Waldbühne.
Berliner Luft March
It is customary for the conductor to occasionally leave the podium and take the place and instrument of one of the musicians. Kurt Masur has been seen on the timpani. This time, it is Gustavo Dudamel who exchanges places with the first violin.
Berliner Philharmoniker, at Waldbühne, Berlin, July 2017.
