There's more to this concert than music

The highlight of the year for the Lend village band (Lend is Embach’s „sister village“ 400m below us) is the Cäcilia concert to celebrate music’s patron saint’s day. 

Resplendent in their red uniforms with black capes, reflecting Lend’s industrial heritage, they played music ranging from challenging classical numbers to swing and old favourites to a packed house. The high standard is a credit to the music director.

A report on the concert in the Embach/Lend village magazine, written by the band’s chairman, is headed “Music with much Love and Swing, many Honours and Thank Yous” which is a pretty accurate summary.

The music was great – but the talking must have taken up an equal amount of time. After the first musical piece all the VIPs had to be welcomed: one by one they stood and were applauded. VIP means everyone in the village who is not an ordinary pleb, (even assistants to VIPs get a mention) plus music directors from all the surrounding villages, mayors and other nobs from the world of music. This took quite some time and enough clapping to make our hands tingle.

Back to the music: Before long it was time to award honours to long-standing band members, juniors who have reached a certain standard and others who have had notable successes. By the time these and other award winners each had lined up with the mayor and other dignitaries for photographs, the crowd was getting restless.




Resplendent in their uniforms - members of the Orts- und Werks Musikkapelle Lend together with VIPs - the Mayor and union boss lining up for photographs

 

Added to all this, Austrian tradition says concerts must have a compére who not only has to say what’s coming up, but has  to spice it up with a potted biog of the composer and jokes and poems. However good these may be, and in Lend they are good but delivered in dialect incomprehensible to outsiders, it means more talk, less music.

It is part of life here; one of those things the outsider must observe and accept as it is. I go every year; I know what to expect and enjoy it for what it is – not just a concert, but an annual event with musical accompaniment - something Austrian. It’s an example of why moving to a new country reawakens all your senses – things are different. It’s why I am glad live here.

It is especially pleasing to see so many youngsters playing in the band and getting rewarded for their efforts, this year: François Choukri looking like a born percussionist, particularly with the cymbals, Michael Moser on the tenor horn which is almost larger than him and trumpeter Jenny Viehauser.