By Anne W. Semmes
Imagine a world class music festival set in a breathtakingly beautiful peninsula with water views and mountains. No, not the Aspen Musical Festival, but one outside Christchurch, New Zealand where music students as young as nine up to college age and beyond can have one on one music instruction with world famous musicians, with concerts in the evening, over a 10 day stretch. My astronomer stepbrother and classical music enthusiast Michael Snowden who lives in Christchurch wished to introduce me to the Akaroa Music Festival so invited the festival founding couple, and a world renowned pianist to lunch.
Founding members Wolfgang Kraemer and his noted cellist wife Edith Salzman, and pianist Michael Endres all share their German roots, but also their love of New Zealand. “It’s absolutely breathtaking,” says Salzman, “Its outlandish beauty and incredible music combined.”
And “Most people don’t know about it,” adds Kraemer, who serves as Festival director.
“Previously I had brought students to our German festival, and to other festivals in Europe,” says Salzman. But why not bring teachers to a site “that’s got a concert hall, that’s got a venue where you can teach, and ideally everything is in walking distance.” So, that first season in 2007 there were half a dozen teachers from Europe and the U.S., and some 30 students, all coming summertime in the Southern Hemisphere in January.
“We keep it a boutique festival,” says Salzman, “to give every student a really intensive and good experience and have very high class concerts.” And those student numbers have even grown to 80 in some years. Cellists seem to outnumber violinists, pianists and viola players. “So, this year, we had four cellists, four violinists, two pianists, flutist, clarinetist, and 13 staff members.” “And last year my students were all from Australia,” tells pianist Endres.
“Before the world closed down with Covid,” says Salzman, “we had a very international festival with quite a few coming from the U.S., Yale students, with quite a few coming from Asia, that was the most international mixture we’ve had…About half are university aged students from first years to masters and doctoral students. And then there are the really talented young ones – Michael had a nine-year-old pianist.”
Stepbrother Michael has even stepped up giving a talk to students on astronomy. “He was very popular,” says Kraemer. But his subject of black holes did backfire with one young boy! “I terrorized Edith’s young son,” tells Michael. “He survived,” responds Salzman with a smile. Michael has also offered “a little bit of relief” to students by taking them out on a sailboat. “It was a medium sized sailing boat that fits about 60 people,” says Kramer, “as all the staff wanted to go.”
Kramer describes the space where the festival takes place in the small village if Akaroa. “It’s a typical New Zealand school – a one-story small building with gigantic amounts of outdoor spaces like schools they tend to have here. And the school we’ve been working with from the first day of the festival, and they’re fabulous. And basically, we get the key to the entire school…So each faculty member has their own teaching studio in there with heaps of extra spaces for the students where they can practice…It’s also right next to the great hall where we have our concerts.”
“It’s the best possible holiday,” tells Salzman. “We have got a house at the end of the village of Akaroa, and you get up in the morning and you just have this view over the bay and walk down the beach and that’s the holiday part of the day. And then you start working…We all like teaching and we all love playing…And the thing is, you never in normal daily life, at university [Salzman teaches at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch.] or here, have that much time to really focus on individual students and to also mix with them, to go out for a drink and your students tag along.”
When I left the Akaroa Festival founders behind, to embark on a two-week cruise of New Zealand, Kraemer and Salzman were heading into the final rounds of booking artists for the 2024 Festival, “to see if they have enough time to tell us if they are amiable.” And how many concerts will there be? “Normally 11 evening professional evening concerts,” tells Salzman, “plus about eight student lunchtime concerts.”
And how many composers will there be featured? “Three to four different composers featured per concert,” says Salzman. So that’s a total of 40 plus! “With the students concerts we are certainly around a hundred composers,” she adds, for “when you have a concert festival like this every year, you try to not repeat yourself, so you want to get new influences.” It’s a delicate balancing,” adds, Kraemer, “because you don’t want to scare the audience away.”
For more information about the Maureen Pettman and The Pettman Foundation sponsored Akaroa International Music Festival, email wfkraemer@pnja.co.nz
