Paris Train to Professional Journey: My AEDES Internship Experience with Tenso CONNECT

The internship began with a train journey from Amsterdam to Paris, which was an experience I always find enjoyable, as the train passes through different landscapes, I arrived at the station of Gare de Nord.

Next morning the rehearsals with ensemble AEDES was about to kick off with Haydn’s “Die Schöpfung”, a piece I hold very close to my heart, as it was one of the first pieces of classical music I had ever sung, back in Lithuania, where I am from originally.

After check-in to the hotel, I started wondering and anticipating all the interactions and challenges of the upcoming days, being nervous to get to know the ensemble, that I used to follow for years, and now I’m in Paris, meeting Mathieu again, and my colleagues of Tenso: Will, Ciara and Maria.

The next morning we made our way to the Philharmonie de Paris - our workplace for the upcoming days. After quick introduction the work swiftly began - the opening choirs of the Oratorio, diving into the fugues, and although the work itself was quite familiar to all, I was once again impressed by the way Mathieu was engaging with the ensemble, and finding ways of emerging ourselves into the musical world of Haydn.

Since we sang in German, with a predominantly French ensemble, the main emphasis was working on the pronunciation, which, at times, seemed more detailed than thought through than my previous experiences in mostly german speaking choirs, to which I was again pleasantly surprised and was happy to find new space for improvements within the area.

After several days of rehearsing and spending our time in Paris, walking and making new connections with my fellow colleagues, the day before the concert, we met with the conductor Masaaki Suziki. The meeting put another axis to this already multicultural experience: rehearsing a German piece with a French ensemble and a Japanese conductor!

Together with Orchestre de Chambre de Paris and three amazing soloists, we put the finishing touches to Haydn’s masterwork,The following day, we met at the dressing rooms of Philharmonie de Paris (in the hallway we even met Maestro Mutti, who was having rehearsals for another performance the following day).

I was taken away by how carefully Mathieu had prepared the choir, and how much detail was being put to each passage of the Oratorio, as the ensemble received notes up to the very moment of the performance, to ensure maximum artistic quality of the professional group I was given the chance to be part of.