“We aren’t supposed to drink on the bus, but I brought beer!” After a full day of rehearsals and a concert in Copenhagen, the musicians of the Baltic Sea Philharmonic were on the road to Sønderborg, a town straddling the main Danish peninsula and the island of Als. It was halfway through their Baltic Sea Discovery tour, led by conductor and curator Kristjan Järvi and joined by soloist Gidon Kremer and section leaders from his Kremerata Baltica. They had started off in Lithuania, rehearsing under thatched roofs in the woods, removed from civilization, then traveled on to Russia and Poland. When I caught up with them during rehearsals at DR Byen broadcasting headquarters in Copenhagen, they were still bringing precision and enthusiasm to their tour repertoire of works by Pärt, Sibelius, Weinberg, and Tchaikovsky—even after their 12-hour trek from Gdansk.
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