That is a question certain orchestras might ask as they shuffle bleary-eyed off a plane, tune for the overture and fly home the next day. The maths is already uncomfortable: ticket revenue against the carbon bill, hotel costs against artist fatigue. Rail travel offers an appealing alternative.
Not an option for a performance in Tokyo, perhaps, but shorter distances are increasingly travelled by train – a greener, gentler promise of scenic journeys, spacious seats and the added draw of the dining car. Lovely in theory. In practice, as the Münchner Philharmoniker discovered, the romance of the rails can easily curdle into a lesson in marketing dissonance.
The orchestra’s 2023 tour ought to have been a poster child for sustainable travel: concerts in Lucerne, Cologne and Berlin, musicians ostensibly travelling by ICE, and Deutsche Bahn (DB) splashed across glossy photographs of smiling players performing inside the train. “Travelling together and relaxed to concerts!” crowed the captions.
Reality, however, had other plans. On one leg, multiple ICE trains were cancelled or severely delayed, leaving the orchestra close to 10 hours in transit. On another, taxis had to be commandeered for long stretches because no trains were available. One concert – at the Berlin Philharmonie, of all places – began around 25 minutes late. The Philharmoniker’s Facebook posts spoke of “disaster”; DB blamed weather, technical issues and inadequate infrastructure.
There is something deliciously ironic about rail operators using orchestras – musicians carrying harps, double basses and all – in advertising campaigns, while, on the ground, a single stubborn policy can throw an entire section out of tune. On an orchestra tour, the instruments themselves often travel like VIP luggage: not on the ICE, but in air-conditioned trucks that, unlike the trains, keep to their schedules. Single musicians with their instruments, however, are left to negotiate the vagueness of carriage rules and the changing moods of train staff.
Earlier this year, Professor Peter Schmidt, formerly of the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, travelled by train with his double bass: a dignified, unwieldy companion with a resale value that, by some accounts, rivals that of a new executive car. Schmidt did everything by the book: two tickets and two seat reservations, one for himself and one for the instrument. Yet on a Hamburg–Munich ICE, he was rudely ordered either to leave the train or to stow the bass in a luggage compartment.
Following a written complaint, DB’s reply read like a case study in corporate legalese. Yes, instruments are permitted as hand luggage, provided they “do not obstruct or endanger” other passengers. But no, passengers may not expect to occupy a seat for a double bass for the entirety of the journey, even if they have paid for it. Using a fully paid second seat for such an instrument is “not intended”, because seats are for people.
That is the rule. The instrument therefore floats in a legal limbo: too large to be hand luggage, too solid to be treated as a passenger and apparently too musical to count as either.
Meanwhile, large dogs may travel with tickets and reservations. Bicycles have dedicated booking quotas and clearly marked spaces. There is a robust procedure for making sure your spaniel and your mountain bike are welcome. But for a double bass worth tens of thousands of euros, there is only improvisation.
For musicians, the answer is increasingly obvious. Orchestras pay in missed concerts and exhausted players. The public pays in late performances and changed or cancelled programmes. In the end, “travelling together and relaxed to concerts” is not a transport policy. It is simply advertising with a soundtrack.
Florian Riem
