Beethoven on Ice in Southern Tyrol
December 19th, 2008 at 01:58pm Under Attractions+ ski resorts
An American giving concerts in an ice cave on instruments made of ice. The tunes ring clear, cold and tender, like a touch on a thin glass vase.
Innocently we swing on our skiers off the top of the Schnaltaler glacier- 3212 meter above sea level, and just 200m away from the top ski-lift exit we see a small snow-heap pointing to an attaction on a flag: ICE MUSIC – where the “I” is shown as a musical-key.
So we stop and take off our skis, walk into a cave – past a plastic-bucket on which a hand-written sign asks the visitors for a donation of 5 Euros. Since we don’t really know what the donation is supposed to be for, we just ignore the bucket and find ourselves in an Odeon. Around 35 tourists stand there in klirring cold in their skiing suits and heavy boots – some styropore cushions are supposed to keep our behinds warm when we sit down.
Everything in here is made of either snow or ice. The walls, the bar, the stage, and – the musical instruments.
Tim Linhard from Colorado is the only human on the planet making acoustical musical string instruments out of ice and giving concerts with them, right up there on top of the mountain and glacier. A violin, a cello, guitars, even drums and other percussion instruments and a xylophone.
Each instrument is lit from the inside and shimmers in changing lights between red, green or blue. To be precise – the strings of the instruments are of steel, and the neck and chin-holder made of wood. The bows are made of the usual materials – whatever they may be – in normal instruments.
We need to wait a little, because the violin has a piece of ice broken off and must be fixed. Soon enough they start to play, and like magic the tunes come. One tourist couple is swaying to the music in a tight embrace.
The tunes are absolutely clear – but somehow “cold”.
Tim says, “the longer we play, the better the sound becomes. Playing is like a massage to these instruments – the ice kind of relaxes in its tension. This requires a certain and more flexible playing technique, and the tone become ever softer as we go on.”
Next Tim plays the ice-flute – he is wearing rubber gloves, the kind that you wear for washing up – the “glaciophone” sounds as if drops were falling into an underground lake. It is eerie and makes the fine hair on my under-arms stand up – so strange; surprisingly, the walls of the cave- although shining – are dry – you cannot even see the breath of the people, although it’s so cold, about minus 5 degress Celsius.
It’s certainly the best fridge of the world and the best place to store those musical instruments.
In case you’d like to imitate this idea, better be prepared. Tim started his experiments with ice-violins in 1982 – the sites were too strong, and the instrument burst into 1,000 pieces.
Meanwhile, Ice Music determines Tim’s life – he even played in front of the Swedish Royal couple once and produced some CDs.
20 volunteers are helping Tim in his endeavour; for 4 months they work 16 hours per day in the Ice-Theater. Anita Stange-Mantovani is one of them, an independent violin-builder from Munich. She is fine-tuning her ice-Stradivari – and she is responsible for static and measurement of all instruments. She takes her annual leave to help Tim with his glacier-project, without getting a penny – just like the other 19 people.
Sure as hell we are so fascinated when we leave the cave, that we forget to throw some money into the plastic- bucket when leaving. No wonder Tim is fighting with his finances – he should take a marketing-consultant.
To find your way to the Ice Music cave – travel via Innsbruck (Austria) to Meran, there in the direction of Reschenpass (Zemez), and shortly after Naturns go left to the Schnalstaler Glacier Lift-Station. It’s about 70km distance from Meran.
The author, Brigitta Vetter, is publishing the site eerietravelsecrets.com where you can find further stories about travels off the beaten path in Europe as well as overseas.
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