This place was anything but ordinary. For their performance on Thursday evening, Christian Elin and Jakob Rattinger did not use a stage. They were playing in a stairwell. The concert in the private house of Wolfgang Zimmer and his wife Carla Müting-Zimmer in Essen-Stadtwald was a special experience – for musicians and guests alike.

Challenging acoustics

For the third time already, the KZA CEO and his wife provided the room for an event within the framework of the festival „Musik zu Gast in Essen“. „The acoustics are really challenging,“ said Christian Elin before the concert began. In the end, however, the duo Elin & Rattinger was able to master the task.

Classical jazz with special instruments

In their performances Elin (soprano saxophone and bass clarinet) and Rattinger (Viola da Gamba) pursue a special concept: The call their program „Klassik.Jazz“. Music from the Baroque and the Renaissance meets modernity, combined with the essentiality of the instruments: „Both – saxophone and viola – are particularly close to the human voice,“ said Jakob Rattinger.

In two concert blocks, melancholic sounds alternated with jazzy arrangements; among most famous pieces such as Mozart’s Turkish march, there were also some of the musicians’ own compositions. And by the way, the musicians revealed interesting facts about their instruments and the music of the respective epoch – always looking upwards, where the visitors had taken their places along the stairs.

Enthusiasm in the audience

After two encores, the audience finally released the artists with a lot of applause and a wonderful experience, as Christian Elin emphasized: „The personal encounter was just great.“