Video: Milky Chance and the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra – fm4.ORF.at

This was the FM4 radio session with Milky Chance and the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra. You can also watch the video here!

Von Susi Ondrušová

The FM4 radio session with Milky Chance and the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna. Exceptionally, the band shares the stage with a 55-piece orchestra, three background vocalists and a conductor. Goose flesh!

“We normally never do something like that,” are the first words from singer and guitarist Clemens Rauhbein after the opening number of the FM4 radio session: “Synchronize”. The four-piece band, its three background singers and the RSO under the direction of Gottfried Rabl had two days to rehearse and rehearse these newly arranged songs together for the orchestra.

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The lead time for an FM4 radio session to take place is enormous. The schedules of an international band and also the orchestra are jam-packed. Gottfried Rabl, who has conducted the radio sessions with Nada Surf and Cari Cari in the past, really likes the musical variety that such a project brings to the orchestra. One day it’s Mozart, another day it’s performing contemporary compositions at WienModern and then meeting a band like Milky Chance.

Three months before the FM4 Radio Session, Milky Chance performed at the Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado. The magic word so that sessions with the RSO can take place at all is: scores. Together with musician Florian Spiess, the band rearranged sixteen of their songs from their four albums and reworked them for the orchestra. Gottfried Rabl says after the first rehearsal the day before the performance: “Writing a large orchestral score takes a lot of time. The arranger Florian Spiess did this in a very short time. That’s why these radio sessions don’t take place that often. You have to have a band that is open to playing with an orchestra because you suddenly have to play exactly at the tempo, according to the conductor or the click!”

Whether the violas or the flugelhorn or the clarinets, the two musicians are particularly fond of the harp: “When we founded the band, we said in 10 years we wanted to do it with the harp! Here we are!” laughs Philipp during the interview. In addition to brass, wood and wind instruments, the two were also impressed by a “chain instrument” from the orchestra. “The chain is at the top of the percussion mechanism. It is folded over like this and there is a chain noise. It looks like a dungeon chain from a castle!” Not easily visible to the audience from the rows of seats in the Radiokulturhaus, but definitely unmistakable, for example at the end of “Don’t Let Me Down”.

200 FM4 listeners took a seat in the large broadcast hall for the FM4 radio session in the hall. A few fans are seeing Milky Chance live for the first time and in such an intimate and extraordinary setting, as the band usually plays in halls ten times their size. With the three words “Golden. Wow. Fantastic,” says an FM4 listener, describing the concert. Others rave about the euphoria of the orchestra musicians (hello to the cellists in the front row!) and about the noticeable attention from the audience, who listened with great concentration, but also got up and started dancing at the exuberant moments. It was like “falling in love again” because many of the songs that they had heard so many times and knew by heart were given a new shine with new instrumentation and sometimes a different tempo.

“The emotions that are perhaps already hidden in some songs are further “elevated” (amplified) by the orchestra”Clemens said in the interview and Philipp had to think a little nervously about the phantom pain the day after: “We have to be a little careful about what happens when the orchestra is gone again when we play again. So the hole after the rush!” The one word that comes to mind immediately after the FM4 radio session that best sums up the evening? Goose flesh. Even.

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