Markus Weidmann: If I weren’t a musician …

  Markus Weidmann: If I weren’t a musician …  

In this section we introduce members of the Berliner Philharmoniker and their passions beyond music. Today: bassoonist Markus Weidmann, who sees the world through the lens of a camera.

“Make visible what might never have been noticed without you,” is a saying by the French film director Robert Bresson. Markus Weidmann could not agree more. When, for example, he discovers an intricate ice formation while hiking, he takes out his camera to photograph the delicate bloom. “I am fascinated by capturing a fleeting moment in nature,” Markus Weidmann explains during a rehearsal break in the Philharmonie canteen.

Markus Weidmann has been a member of the Berliner Philharmoniker since 1997. He first encountered the bassoon through his local music society, where both his father and older brother were already playing. Although eleven-year-old Markus was about ten centimetres shorter than his future instrument, he was immediately captivated by its warm, deep sound. He later studied at the Hochschule für Musik Hannover with Klaus Thunemann and, from 1993 to 1995, was a scholarship holder at the Karajan Academy, where he studied with his current colleague Stefan Schweigert.

Markus Weidmann’s passion for photography is almost as old as his love of the bassoon. “For my First Communion, my godparents gave me a small camera,” recalls the Mainz native. “They were enthusiastic photographers themselves and gave me plenty of useful advice in the beginning.” When his older brother bought a single-lens reflex camera, Markus wanted one too and purchased one for himself. At first he photographed everyday family life, took close-up pictures of insects and caterpillars, and captured the beauty of sunsets. Gradually, however, his focus broadened.

When Markus Weidmann became a member of the European Union Youth Orchestra and the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, he began documenting everyday orchestral life with his camera. He pasted the finished photographs into albums, labelled them and noted the negative numbers so that his fellow musicians could order prints from him. “When I leaf through these albums today,” he says with satisfaction, “I realise that I documented a piece of each orchestra’s history.”

Over the years, Markus Weidmann has photographed not only colleagues but also numerous conductors. “I must have taken well over a hundred photographs of Sir Simon alone over all those years,” he remarks. The writer and passionate photographer Friedrich Dürrenmatt expressed a similar idea: “To make the essence of a person visible in a photograph is the highest art of photography.” That, however, is an art that requires a great deal of practice. He also uses his smartphone, appreciating the fact that it is always at hand and makes it easy to capture an unexpected moment. But when it comes to artistic possibilities, he still prefers a camera.

Like every photographer, Markus Weidmann produces more images than he can ultimately use. As a first step, he deletes at least half of them before selecting a handful of strong photographs from those that remain. He then devotes considerable attention to their digital post-processing.

Would he ever consider curating an exhibition of his photographs? “That would be a dream,” he smiles. Then he hesitates. Choosing the photographs, he says, would be the hardest part. Which ones do you include—and which do you leave out?