Written for the Thomanerchor Leipzig and premiered under the direction of the Thomaskantor himself, the six cantatas of the Christmas Oratorio have been an integral part of the choir’s calendar ever since. In 2018, under the direction of Bach‘s 17th successor Gotthold Schwarz, the Thomanerchor and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig continued this tradition with an outstanding ensemble of soloists.
800 Years St. Thomas Boys Choir
In 2012 the St. Thomas Boys Choir Leipzig celebrated its 800th birthday. An almost unbelievable period of time, if one considers that the choir outlasted all political systems, maintaining its unbroken traditions over the centuries, and was thus able to hold onto established principles such as the inclusion of the elder boys in the education of the younger ones. The film accompanied the St. Thomas Boys Choir and their choir master Georg Christoph Biller over the period of one year, immersing the audience in a unique world between motet, boarding school and football pitch, into a life that is distinguished by success and pressure to perform, doubts and pride, homesickness and genuine friendship.
Quatuor pour la fin du temps
With Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Isabelle Faust, Jean-Guihen Queyras and Jörg Widmann, four outstanding soloists dedicated themselves to Olivier Messiaen’s “Quatuor pour la fin du temps”, a unique work of music history, and performed it together at the “Meetingpoint Music Messiaen” that was built on the site of the former prisoner of war camp just outside of German-Polish town Görlitz/Zgorzelec, exactly where the camp’s so-called “theater barrack” once stood. It was there that Messiaen composed the quartet and on January 15, 1941 performed it for the first time in front of fellow prisoners.
Blomstedt conducts Voríšek & Mozart
With this concert, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and Herbert Blomstedt embarked on a musical journey to the Czech Republic in memory of the orchestra’s former conductor Václav Neumann. It was there that Jan Václav Voríšek was born in 1791, the manuscript of his D Major Symphony sharing the fate of the symphonies of his friend Franz Schubert in neither being published nor performed during his lifetime. Prague was also the place of a short, late, and rare happy chapter in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s moving biography and his D major Symphony K. 504 was premiered there. PROGRAM Voríšek: Symphony D major, op. 23; Mozart: Symphony D major, K 504 “Prague”