The hallowed Berlin Philharmonic is captured on tour in Trip to Asia: The Quest for Harmony, screening at the New Zealand International Film Festival this July and August. German director Thomas Grube tells BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM how he got his backstage pass.


THE BERLIN PHILHARMONIC is considered one of the finest orchestras in the world. Founded in 1882, the orchestra’s reputation was established with having the likes of Mahler, Richard Strauss, Brahms, and Grieg conduct it in its early years. In later times, towering figures like Herbert von Karajan left their imprint. However, while the orchestra exudes this reputation for traditionalism, and perfection, a new documentary, Trip to Asia: The Quest for Harmony made by German director Thomas Grube gets inside the orchestra itself. Capturing the orchestra while on tour to a number of Asian cities, Grube gains unprecedented footage into a cultural giant – and in the process creates an intimate and fascinating portrayal of creativity, individualism, and the communal spirit of an orchestra.

Grube started off wanting to become a photographer. He produced films but “more and more and more, this inner voice said I have to say something to the world, to people. I want to reach people. And I found this medium. Actually I think, if I could play an instrument, I would prefer to play music. It’s an even more direct form of communication.” Grube however wasn’t initially a fan of classical music, let alone considering trying to deal with it artistically. “I was a normal young person. I didn’t learn a classical instrument, I played guitar and bass, and I played in a punk band. I was into all kinds of music, but classical music was something that I was rather afraid of. I thought you could only say something about it if you were a specialist and know something about it. I was growing up in the times of Karajan, who was the great master, the great conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic in the time when I was a small kid. That was always Sunday concerts on television – very serious, very stiff. For me, Sundays were always a little depressing just because of this atmosphere. It had something untouchable for me.”

However, his interested was piqued after being introduced to the work of Leonard Bernstein. “I got into his life story and all of the contradictions in that life story. When I found out about that human being Bernstein, not the genius Bernstein, this changed it a little. I got more and more interested. To me it always works through the people.” His previous film, Rhythm Is It! looked at a group of young people dancing to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. “When I first heard that piece, I thought ‘oh my god’. I was totally confused. But through that project I became a specialist in that, I could recognise any note. I learned to lose my fears and to love it.” Grube admits that because he’s “somebody who’s not a specialist. I had this real inner mission to build bridges now to people, and connect art and life.”

Grube worked with the Berlin Philharmonic on Rhythm Is It! “No-one believed that kids dancing the Rite of Spring could become a movie that people would like to go to. We had a hard time finding finance for the film, but both the orchestra and we believed in something, in a vision that we wanted to do this. In the end it turned out it had become a very successful film. It bonded us in a way. There was basic trust from that point on.” Grube was then invited to film the orchestra when they went on tour to a number of Asian cities. “I was not really interested in doing a tour film. I didn’t get any inspiration from just a tour film.”

Instead, Grube was interested in trying to answer a particular question. “You train your whole life. You’re all good as soloists. If you play in the Berlin Philharmonic, you are top of the world in your instrument. They come from all over the world. You make it to the orchestra and you’re there. [But] you get your recognition not for yourself but with one hundred and twenty others. You’re not really heard. How can, if you’re an artistic person, and you want to express yourself – this is why you learned the instrument – how can you end up in an orchestra and be happy with that? I could discover, and find out how they balance this psychologically, how this functions and what are the consequences of this.” Grube had to ask permission from the orchestra, and his proposal put to a democratic vote by the orchestra. “I had to tell them I wanted the human face and not just the perfect face.”

Grube says that prior to the documentary, “they only wanted that perfection. They are perfect, they don’t make mistakes, they are the perfect orchestra. That is the reason why I wasn’t interested, so bored as a kid, because everything was so un-human. There’s always two sides in life, there’s light and darkness and they belong together.” And, because of this thematic underpinning, Grube wasn’t intending to simply speak about the Berlin Philharmonic. “It’s not just a film for classical music lovers. It might sound like that, but when you watch it, you see that it’s a very universal film about life. It’s a statement, and proof through the lives of these musicians, and what they tell you about their life stories, how important art and culture is for human survival. That’s actually what it’s about.”


Grube assembled a lot of interviews for the film, and ended up featuring twenty-five characters. He started however by talking to as many people as he could. “I went in every concert break, every rehearsal break, I was backstage in the cafeteria and approached and said ‘hey do you have a few minutes for me, can we sit down and talk a little bit.’” He talked to about fifty people without using a camera. “I went for who’s sympathetic to me. It’s a society. There are the greatest, most wonderful people, and there are people you don’t want to be friends with.” Twenty five is a considerable number of film subjects. Grube says “it works in the dramatic structure, because they are a group. They share the same experiences. I didn’t want to just go for three protagonists. It’s a group and I wanted to tell a group story.”

Grube won confidence from his subjects because “I’m not a music critic. I’m a very open person. I went eye-to-eye.” He suggests the orchestra is full of very strong personalities, which made for complex subjects. “You can only survive in that orchestra – and it’s an orchestra of egos – you can only survive with a very strong personality. They have a two year probation time. In that probation time, it’s not about how you play your instrument, because everybody who goes to audition there is already great. It’s much more about what kind of personality do you have, are you going to deal with that pressure you have everyday from right and left because they are very strong.”

Being on tour and forced to hang out with the each other also meant the orchestra members were “not in their secure surroundings. They were kind of fluttering and had no ground to stand on. It made it easier for me to use the situation.” Grube suggests there are parallels with other areas of work, including the filmmaking process itself. “It’s the same when you work in a company or a team, or when you play football. You can’t always be the soloist, otherwise the team-playing doesn’t work. We had four cameramen, four directors of photography. All of them quite known in their field, all of them strong personalities and egos. It wasn’t easy for them, because every two days we were changing cities, and there was immense stress. Everybody had different assignments during the days, we met for the rehearsals and the concerts. It was very difficult for them because they didn’t get the whole picture. They had to trust me that I know what I was doing. They had to trust the others that they were getting the pictures too, which for a cameraman is quite hard, because they want to give the film a signature. That was not easy, I had to say ‘look at the orchestra, it’s exactly the same. Don’t be frustrated. Trust the conductor!’

Grube found plenty of metaphors by travelling around a number of different cultures. “I don’t think we could have done a trip to America. Asia even if it passes by very fast, and even if it’s very different cultures – China is so different from Korea which is so different from Taiwan which is so different from Japan – it is a huge inspiration for how the ego and the individual can find harmony.” The film itself starts with birth and ends with death (new members on probation) and Grube says he was surrounded by “a continent that gave a lot of metaphors, images, pictures of the individual and the community, and the contradictions.” Grube also uses Strauss’ ‘Ein Heldenleben’ as a similar metaphor throughout for his soundtrack. “I didn’t have a choice [to use it]. It was the concert programme. I’m very happy for it because the hero’s life has a dramatic structure. It tells this life cycle. I took it exactly like that and left it in its order. You have all the movements and I gave each movement a city.

Grube’s documentary aims to demystify a high art institution like the Berlin Philharmonic by showing its human side. Grube also penetrates into how people function as individuals while trying to achieve a communal goal, while being all too human while trying to achieve perfection. Grube also wanted people to connect to the arts by personalising something that was previously considered untouchable. “Music classes in schools get more and more cancelled. When money is cut, then it’s cut in culture and arts. How do we interest people in that? We have to make it clear that art and life deal with each other, and why arts are relevant for our existence. If art is just something beautiful hanging on a wall and people don’t understand what it has to do with life or our existence, if it’s not relevant to our lives, people won’t see a reason why art and culture are so important.”

See also:
» Three for the Road: Trip to Asia: The Quest for Harmony
» Thomas Grube: triptoasia.de/en.html