Interview with Julia Schoch

Ms. Schoch, what would be your first interim conclusion after the past few months? What is your impression of the city and your new job?

When people ask me how long I've been here, I always have to think for a moment and realize: it's only been a year. It's amazing - because so much has already happened in this one year. We've done so many great projects and I've found everyone to be very welcoming. I also received a very warm welcome from the Filmfest team. I think in my second week we were sitting in my office - nothing was set up yet, it was chaos, I had to find my way around thematically. And then Karina Gauerhof and Anke Hagenbüchner-Sobiech sat with me and I immediately realized that it was a good fit - we have the same attitudes about where we want to go with the project. Encounters like that immediately helped me to feel that I had arrived at the end of last year.

What is it about working with the film festival?

We learn to deal with a different art form and to a certain extent to subordinate ourselves to it. When we accompany a film, for example, the timing is absolutely crucial. The orchestra itself is not the center of attention and cannot play as freely as it normally would. If something falls over in the movie, then of course the drums have to make the corresponding sound at that exact moment. I also think the cooperation with the film festival is extremely important for the preservation of our art form, because we mustn't forget: The majority of people who listen to orchestral music these days hear it in movies. Even if they are not consciously aware of it. Almost everyone immediately recognizes the theme music from "Star Wars" and, especially in the case of John Williams, this is also fantastically composed orchestral music.

The collaboration with the film festival already has a long tradition in Braunschweig. What do you think is so special about this interplay between the film festival, the state theater and the state orchestra?

The collaboration is very close and much more open than I had imagined. I was really surprised when Karina Gauerhof sat in my office and didn't have a movie in her luggage, but asked me which movie we would like to make. In the course of the conversation, it became very clear in which direction we wanted to go and what we could imagine. It's a collaboration at eye level.

What do you personally find particularly appealing about the medium of film?

I think it's the perfect symbiosis of all art forms. When you study musicology, you learn that opera is a total work of art and, for me, film goes one step further: the live moment of the performance and all the imponderables that go with it are eliminated and we see the multimedia work of art exactly as the artist wants to show it to us.

Let's take a little detour. What can we expect at the opening film concert this year?

I think it's great that we've found something that's completely different - and yet a further development. At first glance, you think it's a 180-degree turn that we're doing here, but it's actually so close. In the last two years, we've had classic silent films on the program. Now we're playing an animated film that also manages without spoken language and transports most of the emotions through the music. "The Red Turtle" is so artistically sophisticated and at the same time something for the whole family.

When you started, you went into a program that was already in place. Now you are really starting to develop your own themes. What ideas do you still have for your personal program?

The Symphonic Mob project is very important to me, and you can read more about it in our season brochure. We're inviting people of all ages and all instrumental abilities to play with us. It's going to be super interesting for us and certainly for the participants too! There will be rehearsals in small groups beforehand so that you can get to grips with the music. We will be producing sheet music in a simplified form. This means that even someone who only started playing the violin last year, for example, can play along a little. This way we can convey the feeling of an orchestra and show how nice it is to make music together.