Throughout the year the Classical Department organizes several orchestra projects. The biggest event of this year just happened: On the 22nd of April the Conservatoire orchestra played the 5th Symfony of Mahler. But right now we will look back on the project before, the first orchestra project since corona, and the first project in Amare: MMMMM ... Music, Mozart, Mendelssohn, together with Daniele Zamboni, Coordinator production and chamber music of the classical department.

'It was a very big and beautiful project, we played together with a lot of people for the first time since years of covid. The students were very excited to play together again. The concert day was the first day that the covid measures were lifted and people were allowed in without masks and QR-code. You could feel tremendous joy and noticed that students really did the best they could.

The first rehearsal started one week after the move to Amare. Because of that, the planning of the project was quite challenging. We knew, for example, that we couldn't copy the parts yet in Amare, because the reprography in Amare wasn't opened yet.

Logistically it was quite complicated, we had to figure out where to find everything. It wasn't like in the old building where things stayed more or less the same in the last couple of years. It was a challenge, but we did learn a lot and we can use that in upcoming projects.

At the beginning of every year, all the students of the Classical Department, get the 'Yellow Booklet' in which they can find which projects they play and which dates to block in their calendar. In consultation with the teachers all the students are divided over the different projects.

With these kinds of projects, we want to give students a chance to play solo. Therefore we asked Nadia ten Kate to play the Rondo for violin by Mozart. Pedro Perez played the 3rd movement of the Bassoon Concerto of De Puy. There was a big connection between the soloists and the orchestra and everybody was happy to play together.

We opened the concert with the 39th symphony of Mozart and ended with parts of the Midsummer Night's Dream by Mendelssohn.
Wind players often have to play extracts of Midsummer Night's Dream for auditions. For them, it was amazing to actually play those things they've studied so much in an orchestra setting.'

Daniele studied Clarinet at the Royal Conservatoire himself, so he's been in several orchestra projects as a student.
'It is completely different. As a student, you just sit in the orchestra, receive your schedule, sit down, play and that's it. But if you see it from the other side, you also see all the steps before, after and in between. I don't think I would be able to be a producer without the experience of being an orchestra member. When I was in the orchestra myself I experienced that it was nice when things were properly organized, but I also saw some things that could have been done better, this is the knowledge that I can use now.'