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Bach Festival
Bach Festival in Leipzig, 2010
From the 11th until the 20th of June 2010 the Leipzig Bach Festival of 2010 will take place in connection with the 85th Bach Festival of the NBG under the motto ‘Bach, Schumann and Brahms’. Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms represent, in the Bach Festival programme of 2010, two leading protagonists of Bach’s promotion in the 19th century. Schumann, whose birth is approaching its 200th anniversary, belongs to the initiators of the first Complete Bach Edition, and he himself had conceived of a Bach edition. In 1851, Schumann conducted the original Düsseldorf performance of Bach’s St. John Passion, and thereby became the pioneer for a work which was then seldom performed.
Brahms, who had long been supported by Schumann and who later on closely collaborated with the Bach biographer Philipp Spitta, has dealt with the creative work of the great St. Thomas Cantor in many ways: as a composer, pianist and conductor. One of the highlights of the 19th century Vienna Bach promotion is indeed the performance of the St. Matthew Passion on Good Friday, 1875, under his direction. In 1879, he was even offered the office of St. Thomas Cantor by the Leipzig City Council. Several of his works have been closely influenced by Bach, and provide a hint of the spiritual affinity shared by the two musicians. In 2010, you can look forward to: the St. Thomas Choir of Leipzig, Georg Christoph Biller, the Gewandhaus Orchestra, Riccardo Chailly, Andras Schiff, Collegium Vocale Ghent, Philippe Herreweghe, Harrison Birtwistle, the RIAS Kammerchor, the Chamber Orchestra of Basel, Thomas Zehtmair, Combattimento Consort Amsterdam, Jan Willem de Vriend, Robert Hill, and Sir John Eliot Gardiner. The complete programme of the 2010 Bach Festival will be issued at the end of September.
October 1st 2009 is the start of the two-week, exclusive
pre-sale period for tickets to the concerts of the 2010 Leipzig Bach
Festival for members of the Association of the Friends of the Bach Archives
as well as, given the Bach 2010 jubilee year, for members of the New
Bach Society (NBG). Employees of Ticket Online will accept ticket orders
against a password at the established telephone number 01805-56 20 30
(from outside Germany: +49-3871-2 11 41 91). The telephone call costs
14 cent per minute (variations possible in case of rates from abroad
or from mobile/cell phones). Online bookings are also possible over
a coded page of the Bach Archives website. From 21st September on the
business office of the NBG will be glad to furnish the access codes.
Further plans for Bach Festivals of the New Bach Society
2010 Leipzig (11.06.-20.06)
2011 Wetzlar
2012 ??
2013 Detmold
2014 Weimar
2015 Leipzig
In 2012, the Breslau Bach Society intends to stage another Bach Festival
in Breslau on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the first Breslau
Bach Festival. The NBG has been invited to the event.
Leipzig Bach Festival 2009
Under the motto ‘Bach, Mendelssohn and Reger’, the Leipzig Bach Festival of 11th to 21st June 2009 is inviting us to about 100 musical events to be held in the music city. Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Max Reger mark the beginning and the end of a musical epoch during which Johann Sebastian Bach’s works were increasingly raised in the consciousness of a broader public, a process to which both composers contributed significantly. Two jubilees as important as the 200th anniversary of Mendelssohn’s birth, the composer who with other personalities belonged to the pioneers of the first complete Bach edition, and the 600th anniversary of the founding of Leipzig University, whose music director since 1907 had been Reger, will shape the visage of the music city in 2009, and will be reflected in the Bach Festival’s programme. Reger, as hardly any other musician of his generation, had grappled with Bach’s creation.
The musical offerings will include concert programmes especially conceived for the Bach Festival, by highly-rated artists and ensembles such as the Ernst Senff Choir, the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Leon Botstein, the English Concert, Gerhard Oppitz, Concerto Koeln, Lauma and Baiba Skride, as well as the Gewandhaus Choir and Orchestra conducted by Herbert Blomstedt. Also as guests in Leipzig will be the Chamber Orchestra of Europe with its conductor Douglas Boyd, and the Kammerchor with the Stuttgart Baroque Orchestra under the direction of Frieder Bernius. For the first time at a Bach Festival, the St. Thomas Choir will perform jointly with the Dresden Kreuzchor; it will be conducted by the St. Thomas Cantor Georg Christoph Biller.
The broad palette of the programme will include symphonic, organ and chamber concerts, family events, jazz music, concert tours and musical church services, all in different programme series. Friends of modern and popular adaptations of Bach’s music will be catered to at open-air events and at ‘Bach – reflections in jazz’. A free overview of the concerts can be requested at the telephone number provided, as well as on the Web sites of the Leipzig Bach Festival.
The Leipzig Bach Festival is unique in the world owing to its connection to Bach’s places of activity in Leipzig and surroundings, to the collaboration of the St. Thomas Choir as well as of the Gewandhaus Orchestra. The diversity of the Leipzig Bach Festival’s programme shows the entire scope of Bach’s spiritual, wordly and chamber-music creativity, its manifold relationships to the music city of Leipzig, as well as its impact on contemporaries, pupils and spiritual descendants of subsequent musical epochs.
Tickets are available at all best-known sales agencies in Germany,
or via telephone orders. Dial +49-3871-2 11 41 91.
Or request them on the Internet under www.bachfestleipzig.de.
Jennifer Bruecher