The Magic of the Isar

March 14, 2023 8:00 p.m.
Gasteig/HP8 München (Saal X)

"Everything flows.This motto, which everyone can experience while making music, has occupied us for a long time. This special concert gives us a whole new perspective,” says Sebastian Förschl, percussionist with the Munich Philharmonic.

March 14 is International Day of Action for Rivers. This year we recognized the approximately 17-kilometer-long course of the "Upper Isar" from Krün downstream to the Sylvenstein reservoir. This river is unique as it is the last branched wild river landscape in Germany that still exists. But it is threatened. Due to the diversion of a large part of the water at the Krün dam, the necessary power of the water, the dynamics and the debris in the river and floodplain are missing. Willow bushes are spreading and forcing the river more and more into a corset. The open gravel areas with their specialized animal and plant species are increasingly being lost.

In an effort to to create connection to the Isar through music, the WWF Germany sponsored this evening concert in cooperation with the Munich Philharmonic, Munich based photographers from the Southern Bavaria regional group of the Society for Nature Photography (GDT) and the nature filmmaker Jürgen Eichinger. The musicians selected pieces that personally remind them of the sound of the Isar, the concert accompanied by impressive nature recordings of the water habitat Isar and its inhabitants.