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Schlagwort: music festival

  • „It’ll be a fest!“ A talk with Bachfest Director Michael Maul

    Rick Fulker: At the press conference you indicated that this year’s ticket sales may set a new record. What do you think the reason for that is?

    Michael Maul: Thus far we’ve been selling 10-15 percent more tickets than in our previous record year. And we have considerably more events this time. Normally you might think that the same number of people would turn up and spread themselves out among the additional concerts. But that’s not what happened. Quite simply, even more people came.

    And why?

    I don’t want to say it’s because of the program alone, even though I hope that’s part of it. In recent years we’ve welcomed the worldwide Bach family to the Bachfest Leipzig, in part by inviting semi-professional Bach choirs and amateur choirs, not just to listen but also to perform along with the great ones. Last season there were forty Bach choirs here. Some brought along their own orchestras.

    I think these ensembles have become the world’s best Bach influencers. They go back home and talk about what a nice time they had in Leipzig. Either they return or they convince friends to come. It’s not always the same people. The regulars make up about ten percent of visitors. Last year nearly forty percent were here for the first time.

    How much of your audience comes from abroad?

    Last year it was about forty percent. And about eighty percent of those who come from Germany are not from the region but tourists who stay a few days.

    One argument in favor of public support for culture festivals is that visitors pour more money into the local economy than the city pays out in the form of subsidies. Can you document this?

    We learned from questionaires that guests stay an average of six days and, apart from purchasing tickets, spend about 200 euros a day in the city. Now, we know exactly how many tickets are sold but not exactly how many individuals are in attendance. But it does seem that the average visitor will hear an average of six concerts.

    Do the math, and you find these people pump five to eight million euros into the local economy. Maybe even ten million. 

    Our total budget is 3.5 million. The city contributes 1.35 million but gets several times that amount back. Add the image factor, which can’t be quantified. A good return on a city’s sustainable investment in culture. 

    Do you expect the level of public funding to remain stable?

    Yes. The city of Leipzig has contributed the same amount from 2008 until recent years. During which we’ve more than tripled our proceeds and more than doubled the number of visitors. I’ve worked on getting the subsidy raised substantially because it’s become increasingly difficult to maintain a full-spectrum program. This year public funding grew by 350,000 euros, and there were substantial additional resources from third parties.

    But we still need to cover about 40-50% of the total budget through ticket sales. We’ll need to take in 1.5 million euros this year to break even, but we’re on target. In the 2014-2017 seasons in comparison, proceeds from ticket sales were about 600,000 euros. So we’ve substantially increased our intake – by the way, without drastically raising prices.

    Because many visitors come from far away and stay longer, we don’t have the main events on the weekends but spread them out evenly over the course of eleven festival days. Apart from concerts, that means readings, excursions, lectures – just about everything. I think this year’s program is the most varied ever. It even includes an augmented reality show: Virtual Bach.

    Of legacy media and influencers

    I remember a time when public broadcasters in Germany would scramble over who gets to record what at the Bachfest. With far fewer concert recordings being made by the legacy media nowadays, what alternatives have you found? And how important is that for the festival?

    Media reports remain very important. They document what goes on here. And they’re effective marketing. But the media landscape in general is undergoing a major transformation. 

    Classical music critiques on the culture pages of major newspapers are becoming rare. Regrettably, but we have to live with it. Many music journalists are frustrated because they don’t get much space. 

    So we’re looking for formats beyond the classical newspaper critique that will generate interest .

    The evolution of the media gives us a chance to reach our audience directly through our own reports. So we issue short video clips as appetizers, with daily reports and concert excerpts conveying the atmosphere.

    In the train station and at the Markt

    Social media is another leg to stand on. We’ve expanded and professionalized our activities there in the past ten years and have lots of followers. A big team is at work, and friends of the Bachfest do their part. We invite influencers active in the field of classical music who report extensively and authentically. They convey the atmosphere too. I think these things work.

    Of course I’m thrilled if a conventional critic notices that the Bachfest is more than just a random succession of concerts with big names. The Münchner Merkur newspaper calls us „the world’s most diversified festival dedicated to a composer.“ I wouldn’t be surprised if that was really true.

    But you asked about concert broadcasts. Broadcasting corporations have reduced or eliminated their budgets for this. I’m happy to have Central German Radio as a strong media partner though. Or Deutschlandfunk Kultur, which this year recorded the St. John Passion for example.

    St. John Passion in St. Nicholas‘ Church

    During the pandemic and afterwards we did a lot of live streaming, partly with public broadcasting partners, but had to cover more and more of the cost ourselves – and no resulting income. This year we cut back on extensive streaming activity.

    If I do a live stream, I have absolutely no idea how many people it reaches. We’d do more of it if we had a reason to – and the necessary additional funding. Of course there are people who love Bach but can’t come for whatever reason, and I’d like them to participate too. But it’s essential for the Bachfest to have people actually travel to Leipzig. And for that to happen, we need a good, and wide-ranging, program. I can take the 30,000 euros that a good stream costs and invest that into two or three more big concerts. Everything now points to prioritizing the live experience.

    Genius loci

    While sitting in St. Thomas’ Church the other day – John Eliot Gardiner was conducting – my mind turned to that authentic location. It’s known that audiences are affected in a special way when they listen to Bach at the source. But how about the musicians? Do they maybe feel obliged to give their all, and then some? Musicians should actually always want to give their best! And yet – is there something about the place that motivates them to give a little extra?

    That’s what they often tell me. The conductor Ton Koopman, for instance, always says, „In Leipzig, in Bach’s churches, we have to be even better because he’s listening!“ After that wonderful concert by the Cappella Mediterranea led by Leonardo Garcia Alarcón, I went up to him. With tears in his eyes, he said, „Michael, that was the most emotional, most moving concert I’ve ever conducted because it was in Bach’s own church!“

    The audiences are pretty special too. They’ve traveled here from all over the world specifically for the music. They’re extremely attentive and generous with applause. That inspires the artists too.

    Looking in unexpected corners

    A few years ago you discovered a previously unknown composition by Johann Sebastian Bach. Any music scholar would dream of finding a lost cantata cycle or a passion. But how likely are such finds?

    I absolutely wouldn’t exclude the possibility. Of course, they’re becoming rarer because the more that turns up, the less there is lying around undiscovered. We have no idea how much might still be out there. Usually these things are found in completely unexpected places. 

    Coincidence, fortuitous circumstances, diligence, a spirit of research – all that has to come together for a discovery to be made. So I’m not making any predictions. I don’t think anything much will be found in major music compilations though. These have already been combed over. I made my discovery, the unknown Bach aria Alles mit Gott (Everything with God) in a place where no one had thought to look: Bach wrote the notes down on two empty pages of a tribute from Weimar dated 1713. He didn’t sign his name, but I recognized the handwriting. A librarian couldn’t have known that.

    So nowadays discoveries are made in historic documents that have been ignored heretofore and whose subject matter has something to do with music. 

    Sometimes you’ll find musical treasures mistakenly grouped together with other content. I discovered Bach’s earliest autographs in 2005 at the Anna Amalia Library in Weimar not in a music collection but among theological writings in the category of monk and monastery literature. This is detective work, and major finds have many contingencies.

    But I’m optimistic that further discoveries will be made, including ones related to Bach. We have a major, ongoing, in-house, 25-year research project with half a dozen people regularly combing through the Central German Archive to locate and edit all existing documents of the Bach family. So we’re tilting the scales to our side every day.

    Does a lot remain to be done? 

    Yes, and there’s a lot to be found. Last year a colleague of mine discovered an unknown document by Bach, a report for one of his solo singers in Leipzig. It was right here in the city archive in a spot where no one had looked before. So I think there’ll be more surprises .

    The Bach hit parade

    A few years ago the Bachfest focused on „Bach’s 30 Best Cantatas“ as chosen by experts. I’m sure there was an outcry from people who were disappointed that their favorites weren’t among the thirty. Next year you’re doing something both similar and different: a ranking of the Top 50 Bach cantatas as determined by popular vote. Do I see a connection here?

    Absolutely! The Bach Cantata Ring was a big success back then. With a wink, we said: We’re performing Bach’s thirty best cantatas knowing full well that nobody can say which ones are the best thirty because Bach composed so much incredibly good music.

    This time I wanted to do something different because the festival theme is about many voices. There’s a nice analogy to Bach’s polyphonic music, where each voice is extremely independent, more so than with any other composer. In modern terms you could say that there’s democracy in Bach’s music. So the motto next year is „In Dialogue.“

    In the programs you’ll find a dialogue between Bach and important composers he esteemed. And between Bach and his contemporary critics like Johann Adolf Scheibe: „Bach Versus Scheibe“ is one program. Or Bach and his 19th century influencers. Or his role models.

    We had the first dialogue about the Bachfest 2026 with our audience. Last year we passed out thousands of flyers and added an online survey, asking people to please tell us their own Top 10 cantatas by Bach. Not the best, but the favorites. After six months of voting, we had over a thousand responses and added up the results just like they do at the Eurovision Song Contest. In the World Wide Bach Cantata Contest, twelve points went to first place, ten points to second, eight to third, and so on.

    Then it dawned on me that this is nothing but the good old hit parade of the 70s, 80s and 90s, when people were glued to their radios all night, recording on cassette and hanging on till the end when the Number One song was announced and played.

    So I thought, why not do this with Bach? Every Bach fan knows that there are practically no bad Bach cantatas. And when you see whom we’ve lined up for these twelve performances, you know they’ll be good. Once again we’re assembling the grand old masters of Bach interpretation, the Big Three: Gardiner, Herreweghe and Koopman. Add Rademann and Rudolf Lutz – he’s pushing 80 as well. It’s really the crème de la crème.

    We’ll present the cantatas in a countdown, No. 50 to No. 1, but not disclosing the programs beforehand. All we’re saying at this point is: The first concert has Nos. 50 to 48, the second Nos. 47 to 44, and so on, down to the Top Four in the last concert. But of course everybody knows that whether 40 or 2, it’ll be a fantastic piece. 

    I’ll spill one secret though: O Ewigkeit du Donnerwort (O Eternity, You Word of Thunder), BWV 20, is ranked No. 50. This big, two-part work is a nice way to kick off the cycle I think, because it begins with an opening chorus that sounds like a French overture.

    I’m certain there won’t be any unpleasant surprises. I’m really looking forward to it. It’ll be exciting to the end. A hit parade with that old, ostensibly dusty thing, a cantata by Bach – which actually isn’t dusty at all. What a nice story!

    If I were still in radio I’d want to take the Bach Top Fifty right back to radio and broadcast them in order. 

    So I’ll spill a secret: we’re in negotiations to do exactly that.

    Wonderful!

    We’re looking for various partnerships so that radio listeners can hear the whole countdown. 

    And another thing: Rather than just lining up the cantatas back to back, we’ll lead into each with a motet by Schütz or Schein that fits the following cantata. For example, the second cantata Bach wrote in Leipzig is Die Himmel erzählen die Ehre Gottes (The Heavens Declare the Glory of God), and Schütz set a motet to the same text. It’ll prepare you for the piece you’re about to hear and give you a little breather.

    I’m sure of one thing: It’ll be a fest! In between, András Schiff will play a big cycle of keyboard music with Parts I, II and IV of Bach’s Clavier-Übung and The Art of the Fugue. There’s no overlap. Those who want to hear either the complete cantata cycle or the piano cycle or both can order tickets exclusively now before pre-ticket sales for the individual events begin in November. There’s a logistical reason for this. In St. Nicholas’ Church, there aren’t many seats in the top price category, and they usually sell out quickly. So as soon as an event is sold out in one category, we can no longer offer the complete cycle as such.

    That’s why we’re offering only the complete cycles for the time being. A lot of friends of Bach are already buying tickets. So putting the large and not terribly well known cantata repertory at the heart of the Bachfest turns out to have been the right decision again. It’s a deft way to play our hand at the authentic location of Bach, Cantor of St. Thomas’. 

  • The exception and the norm at the Bachfest

    So it was just announced that Michael Maul’s contract to lead the Bachfest has been extended for another five years. I had an in-depth interview with him and hope to be able to post it soon.

    Omnipresent at the festival, Maul is an accomplished music scholar. Energetic and outgoing, he’s anything but the shy bookworm type. Watching him react at a concert is to see music resonating in body and mind. As though he knows every note in every work by Bach. Which he probably does.

    He writes the articles in some of the program brochures at the Bachfest, which ended a couple of days ago with a performance of the B Minor Mass. Another not-just-any author who turns up in the brochures is Peter Wollny, director of the Bach Archive, the world’s heartbeat of Bach scholarship. And another familiar name and face at the festival, Christoph Wolff marks his 85th birthday this year. The musicologist and Harvard professor was a primary force in shaping the Bachfest Leipzig when it emerged in its current and much enhanced form a quarter of a century ago. 

    So beyond playing an advisory role, it’s the scholars who shape the event. The result is anything but academic, though there’s some of that too, in the form of lectures.

    Watch out, he may trip over your foot

    Beginning this season, the story of Bach’s life is told by Bach himself. You sit in a room with about thirty other people facing the famous portrait of the composer on the wall. Put on the augmented reality glasses, and a harpsichord appears in the center of the room. The portrait swirls with energy, and out of it steps Bach himself. 

    Slightly grumpy because he’s not allowed to smoke his pipe here, he tells us about being orphaned at age ten and surreptitiously copying music his guardian older brother hadn’t permitted him to see. About walking 200 miles to Lübeck to hear the great Dietrich Buxtehude. About his first jobs, being slapped in prison, or returning from a trip to find that his beloved wife had unexpectedly died. And the rest of his remarkable life, down to the 27 last years in Leipzig, including numbing disputes with his employers, the city officials. 

    It’s utterly charming to hear Bach talk, interrupted by doses of snuff tobacco taken and very lively finger work at the harpsichord. The time traveler finishes his narrative with that famous statement of relative humility (a characteristic Bach was not particularly known for): Anyone can achieve what I did if he works hard enough. 

    The presentation was so realistic that each time the holographic Bach walked around the harpsichord, someone sitting at the end of the row pulled their foot back so he wouldn’t trip over it.

    Cultural phenomena through the lens of AR are still a rarity, but I think what we saw here this year augurs things to come.

    Cellar, drama, Singspiel

    In 1765, a young Johann Wolfgang von Goethe moved to Leipzig to study law at the university. The world was not enriched by another lawyer though, but by Germany’s probably most accomplished man of letters. 

    Legend has it that a painting on the wall of a local wine cellar stirred the student’s interest in the ancient story of Faust, the man who sells his soul to the devil. That place, Auerbach’s Cellar – later immortalized in Goethe’s drama „Faust“ – celebrates its 500th anniversary this year. That’s right: a restaurant dating back to 1525. Tourists love that kind of thing.

    What does that have to do with Bach? Nothing, in terms of biography. But no Bach lover would be satisfied with that: The music is so universal that Bach has something to do with everything. So this year the half-millennium of the local landmark was celebrated with excerpts from Goethe’s Faust, part one, in Auerbach’s Cellar, interspersed with Bach’s music. 

    Seemingly in every German’s DNA, the drama deals with nothing less than the nature of life and the universe. Bach’s music can be equally profound. But the result here was a Singspiel both serious and entertaining: about sixty minutes of spoken word interspersed with an equal amount of instrumental and vocal musical commentary following a multi-course meal. 

    A long round of applause for the musicians and the actors (Burghart Klaußner as Faust, Frank Arnold as Mephisto and Lea Ruckpaul as Gretchen) – and for Michael Maul, who made the excerpts from the play and the music selections.

    Capacity crowds

    It’s not difficult to fill Auerbach’s Cellar, but in fact most of the venues I visited in my week at the Bachfest were filled to the brink, from the 500 seats of the Gewandhaus chamber music hall to the over 1400 in the Nicolaikirche or nearly 1500 in the Thomaskirche. That also goes for the lectures and panels in the Blue Salon, with 200 seats. With about forty percent of visitors coming from abroad, the festival makes every effort to be linguistically inclusive, in publications and simultaneous translation into English.

    As you might guess by now, I feel that the Bachfest is doing something right. You get the sense that they strive for something worthy of the greatest composer the world has ever known.

    Exceptions and norms

    A festival is supposed an extraordinary event, a time-limited escape from the everyday routine. In my radio years, I went to dozens of music festivals, getting the recordings, doing interviews, and hosting and producing about 750 DW Festival Concerts over three decades. I’ve seen every kind, big and small, each with its own organization, program philosophy and marketing strategy.

    What happens though when the exception becomes the norm? Doesn’t that cancel it out, per definition?

    That paradox led to a rather long pause in my music journalistic activity. But it’s no accident that I started this blog with the Bachfest. 

    Apart from the intake of musical nourishment, it was nice to be in an environment where time slows down, and sometimes, during the music, stops. Where despite a hectic schedule, calm prevails. Where a week spent could easily have been more. 

    More of the exceptional has been announced for this fall: Bach’s complete organ works played around the clock over the course of a couple of days by Thomas-organist Johannes Lang.

    And at the festival in June 2026, Bach’s Top 50 cantatas performed as a hit parade, in the reverse order of popularity, as well as a large part of the Clavier-Übung and The Art of the Fugue. The exception is the norm but remains exceptional. Which is also one way to describe the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.

    Be it in the first row or through the media, I’ll be listening, and watching.

  • „In the here and now“: Talking with Jean-Guihen Queyras at the Bachfest

    The famous French cellist played all six of Johann Sebastian Bach’s cello suites back-to-back, his instrument filling the Thomaskirche with sound, every last seat occupied. At the end of this Bachfest performance, reams of applause, standing ovations. A few hours before, I had a chance to sit down with him.

    RF: Listening to you warming up, it struck me how many different ways it’s possible to shape a note, a series of notes, a chord or a phrase. The original scores of the cello suites no longer exist; there are only copies. In these, you see bow markings here and there. But even if we have articulation details in Bach’s own handwriting, what do you think: Are these obligatory, or only suggestions? 

    JGQ: The most interesting and important source for the cello suites is a copy by Anna Magdalena Bach. If we had a manuscript in Bach’s own hand, I’d say we should definitely use his bowing and articulation marks as the center of our inspiration. He was very precise in a day and age when it was usually up to the performer to take the initiative. One expected that. 

    So here’s the thing: Should we completely ignore the baroque tradition in which the player invents the articulation on the spur of the moment? Especially if we have such a precise source? I think that would be overdoing it. But you can strike a balance. My solution is to take greater freedom in the repetitions, as in the baroque tradition – not just articulating differently, but adding different ornaments and even changing to the notes around a little, as they did in those days. Many musicians are dead set against that, including my own personal shining light among performers of the Bach suites, Anner Bylsma. But I have a different view.

    Do you think Bach played these pieces himself? He did play the viola, and maybe a hand-held instrument that was sort of a cross between the viola and the cello. When you hear or play these pieces, do you hear Bach playing?

    Musicologists have studied this question much more than I have without finding an answer. 

    But what’s your feeling?

    I think that the suites were clearly composed by someone who mastered the instrument, down to the last detail. So I can absolutely imagine that he’d pick up the instrument from time to time while composing. But I think he had much better things to do than to practice on it with the aim of performing them himself. He certainly would have had the instrument within reach though, to try out this chord and that. 

    Is there some effect that this particular, authentic space, the Thomaskirche, has on your playing? I ask that because some musicians say, „I owe it to myself to embody the composer no matter where I’m playing.“ And yet – what does this place mean to you? Do you feel the spirit of Bach here? 

    I think that time and the moment are an essential part of the musician’s profession. The concert moment and the perception of experience are at the very center of our art. My son is a painter, and that’s a completely different art form. His relationship to time is quite different. So I think that’s why we train our senses to be extremely sharp in the here and now, in the context of: Now we are experiencing the music, at this very moment! As human beings, we can’t escape it anyway. The audience and the performer share space at the point in time when music is being made. So when I play here, of course I perceive these walls, these arches, and think of how it sounded in the presence of Bach. I think about that every second. 

    Do you do breathing exercises or practice meditation before the concert to bring you into the here and now? 

    Yes, I have my rituals. One thing all musicians know is the Alexander Technique, a kind of applied meditation. Meditation is also usually about being rooted in your body. In a concert situation, the danger is that the head can take over. 

    Bach’s cello suites come in a group of six. Looking at them, you find patterns, such as the alternation between major and minor keys from one suite to the next. Do you see an overall dramaturgy in the six suites, to the extent that they are supposed to be played, all six of them, in order, as you are doing here at the Bachfest? One big arch from beginning to end? Is that how they were performed in Bach’s time, or is it that even important? 

    Whether the suites were performed at all back then or not is actually unimportant. It’s perfectly clear that Bach’s frame of reference was divine, timeless – and that he composed for the future. I would never question that there’s an architecture from the first prelude to the last gigue. It’s absolutely clear.

    So you wouldn’t play them in reverse order?

    No. I used to do things like that in younger years, for example if I played the cycle on two evenings, though I don’t like that. Then I would mix and match them so the two recitals would be roughly the same length; after all, the suites get longer as you go from One to Six. 

    But it’s quite clear: The cycle begins in G Major with those arpeggios, like in the first prelude of the Well Tempered Clavier. Here you see Bach the teacher. He was always that way. His music is incredibly sophisticated, but he also makes sure that someone who’s never heard a note of music before can follow it immediately. That’s what he does with this prelude, which is simply a flow of harmonies.

    He goes from there to the dance movements. There’s a dialogue between G Major and the other keys over the course of the cycle. It’s no coincidence that the Fifth Suite, in C Minor, takes us to the darkest corner. The sarabande in it is almost ethereal; you can hardly recognize the harmony. From there, he launches directly into D Major in the last suite and into a wonderful, upbeat conclusion. 

    I’ve thought the same thing about the Well Tempered Clavier. After one piece, you want to hear the next. Maybe out of habit because you often hear them played one after the other. But I’ve thought that there’s actually more to that. Maybe Bach was thinking: Life is too short to do something for only one purpose. He was always killing multiple birds with one stone. 

    Would you like to give us a guided tour of the six suites? 

    Sure. The first suite is in G Major. On our instrument, that’s a very natural key because you have the empty strings G and D. The movements are short. The suite lasts about fifteen minutes altogether. The form is: Prelude, followed by five dance movements, and you can get used to this pattern. It’s a very harmonious work, and uncomplicated, in the finest sense of the word. 

    The Cello Suite No. 2 is in a minor key, which by definition is less natural, because in minor you don’t have the natural overtones. Bach stirs the emotions more with this one: introverted, searching, human.

    The third, in C Major, has human joy in living. The first movement has a positive feeling, like walking through the forest and seeing beautiful scenes. There’s a conversational quality to this one. It also reminds me of a village celebration.

    The fourth is in E-flat Major, the royal, sublime key. Think of The Magic Flute, those three chords at the beginning. It’s almost ceremonial. The arpeggios rain down on us as though coming straight from God. 

    Then there’s that dramatic Fifth Suite in C minor, very à la française with many embellishments, bringing a sort of stormy energy into the space. Like a Sturm und Drang, but a hundred years earlier. But there are also many contrasts in this suite. That is to say, the first three movements are imbued with that energy generated by ornamentation. Then, with the sarabande, we suddenly fall into a pit. Or are sent into outer space, where gravity is nearly imperceptible. Harmony, which is our gravity and our context, is ambiguous here, so we float. And the suite ends very philosophically with a gigue that would certainly be impossible to dance to, or very difficult anyway, because it’s very soft. There’s not s single double stop.

    Moving on from there, there’s this sudden explosion of joy in the Sixth Suite in D Major, for which – and I apologize for not playing it that way – Bach specifies a cello with five strings. With a versatile cello, he wanted to open up new worlds, moving up to the higher registers, with an even more universal, brilliant D Major quality. Even the prelude is like Easter bells sounding out and celebrating. It ends on that very generous note. 

    That makes me want to hear them all right away. Thank you! 

  • Leipzig larks and music everywhere during the Bachfest

    Leipzig, like Berlin, is a culturally vibrant place, but cleaner, relaxed, accessible. Like many cities in former East Germany, it was given a beautiful remake after German reunification. At least the inner city was, defined by the „Ring“ and corresponding to the old city wall. 

    Some of the outer regions still radiate the run down, bleak mood of the Communist era from the end of World War II until 1990: potholes, drab houses, some of them empty.

    That was the impression from an hour-long musical streetcar ride. A small chamber ensemble packed into a tram and competed for auditory space over the hum and grind of the streetcar in motion. It’s how trams in the West sounded forty years ago; I’d forgotten. The enormous resources poured into spiffing up the city haven’t reached the public transportation system there yet.

    In other ways though, Leipzig has leapfrogged other German cities. Ancient edifices freshly restored. Several streets reserved for bike traffic. Electric busses gliding silently through the pedestrian zone. Hotels and restaurants with about average prices, but you can find some inexpensive deals.

    The stay at my hotel, cutely named Kooook, is a remarkable experience. The room is sparse: no cabinets, no storage space. You learn to live tidily, just as you would in a tiny house. Just enough work space. As a nice prod to save electricity, you have to plug in the lamp for light. Check-in and -out are done electronically, the key is on your phone. Inconvenience? No. The minimalism is in the service of sustainablity. The staff keeps the self-service kitchen and dining area spick and span. Generous spaces offer retreat or foster communication.

    With a cute little laundromat on the ground floor and a library and deck terrace on top, the place doesn’t wear thin even after several days. This particular facility is quite new. It’s part of a chain based in Switzerland; the dartboard in every room references William Tell. There’s another location in Germany I’m told, with more to come.

    Best of all, Kooook is just a short walk and an even shorter bike ride down the street from the Thomaskirche and the Bach Archive, the heartbeat of the Bachfest. But actually, the festival stakes a claim to the whole inner city. Whenever you pass by the big marketplace, or Markt, you’re likely to hear music, and not only during the many hours of festival-organized open air performances that go by the name of Bachstage. With space for a crowd in the quadruple digits, the Markt is jam-packed at these times. The musical content ranges from Bach to jazz and popular. For the faith-oriented, there’s an open-air church service on Sunday morning – with music by you-know-who.

    In the off-hours, smaller ensembles and individuals perform at the Markt – and beyond. It’s actually quite impossible to go from one point to another without hearing music somewhere, be it from a plethora of street musicians, probably not organized by the Bachfest but getting in on the action. 

    The fest even extends to the Leipzig Zoo, offering a guided tour followed by live music. Ranked No. 2 in Germany, the vast facility dates back to the 19th century but has had an ongoing makeover into an entirely natural setting. 

    For many, the first and last thing they see of Leipzig is the train station. It’s worth mentioning that this one may be Germany’s most beautiful. And three guesses as to what you’ll find set up there. Yes, a stage and a grand piano. People are invited to perform themselves. A friend of mine heard a remarkable pianist there. 

    There’s a local specialty for the not too faint of heart – or stomach – the Leipziger Lerche (Leipzig Lark).The small songbird was hunted and eaten as a delicacy since the Middle Ages – particularly in Leipzig – filled with herbs and egg or baked in a pie. That was until King Albert I of Saxony banned hunting it in 1876. Local bakers filled the vacuum. Their creation is filled with a marzipan-like mix of almonds, nuts and a glob of jelly and is topped by a cross suggesting tied larks. I suggest eating one on an empty stomach. It’s nearly an entire meal.

  • Death and Disruption at the Bachfest

    Why is it that some of Bach’s most joyful and encouraging music revolves around the concept of death? 

    On Day Three, John Eliot Gardiner – one of the most active and influential  conductors of this, and the past, century – explored the issue in four cantatas by Bach.

    Fitting the festival theme of Transformation, they illustrated the belief, clearly held by Johann Sebastian Bach, that the end of life is not the end of something, but a transition to another state of being.

    Gardiner, now 82, has celebrated a comeback with ensembles he founded only last year, the Constellation Choir & Orchestra. Two years ago he’d severed his connection with the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists, with whom he’d been identified for sixty years, and withdrew from public life for a while. 

    A maestro of such vast experience and connections wouldn’t have to start over from scratch of course. 

    A fresh start. The instrumental sounds we heard in the Thomaskirche were pure, the voices eloquently expressive,  the overall sound unfettered. Which is the whole point of the seven-decades-old early music movement, where Gardiner has been a key figure. These are musicians who continually, and critically, shake off tradition, go back to the basics, renew.

    Three of the four cantatas on the playbill were first performed in the 1720s in Leipzig. I’m tempted to say that the spirit of Bach hovered over the event. People are often moved to such cute or sweeping statements when they hear music at a location with an authentic connection to a composer. But at the very least, it must give an extra push to the musicians to give their best, and then some.

    Disrupting Bach

    From the Thomaskirche, then on down the street to the opulent neo-baroque Salles de Pologne. I’d presented the Tal Groethuysen piano duo countless times on my radio show over the years, but this was the first time I’ve heard them live. This was a program of twenty fingers and about three and a half million notes: Yaara Tal and Andreas Groethuysen played Bach pieces as adapted for two pianists.

    Long before recordings existed, in a time that was poorer in technology but richer in music education, piano adaptations were a way to disseminate music, combining the joy in hearing something familiar with the pleasant distraction of a new sound.

    Nineteenth century piano transcriptions were part of Tal and Groethuysen’s program, beginning with the Sixth Brandenburg Concerto. Here the lower strings in the original are translated to the nether regions of the keyboard. The duo’s mostly judicious use of the pedal helped generate a rumbling turbocharged  energy. 

    Favorites such as the E-flat Prelude and Fugue and the C Minor Passacaglia (both originally for organ) tickled the ear, but the recital’s real sensation was Studies on Bach’s Art of the Fugue, written by Reinhard Febel in 2014 and premiered a year later by the Tal Groethuysen duo.

    Often, sitting in a concert, I’ll think, „There’s so much in this piece“ and admonish myself to listen closer, only to scold myself when attention drifts, as good as the performance may be. 

    What a different experience, then, to hear something one thought one knew, but now rhythmically dislocated, enhanced with dissonance or shaken to its foundations. It makes you snap to attention.

    Febel doesn’t take a single note out of the Art of the Fugue, but plumbs its riches, dissecting it or overlaying it with itself. 

    I’ve heard this kind of thing done a lot, in theory. Usually you don’t hear the connection. In this instance though, Bach is always palpable. Disrupting the music can mean suggesting an infinite number of other ways that can be done. Taking you right back to the source. Another kind of transformation.

  • Bachfest music and words

    Writing about music isn’t easy because music is a form of expression that is basically independent of words. But let’s not put musicologists and critics out of business. Or bloggers. So here goes, starting with the freshest impressions.

    The last forty-eight hours

    Fitting the time slot lasting till midnight on Day Two of the Bachfest, Spark – The Classical Band took us „Closer to Paradise.“ The program arched from Bach’s Sheep May Safely Graze to Rammstein’s Seemann – bucolic utopia and yearning for death – and eleven other composers with heavenly visions, illusory paradises, dreams and devotion.

    The thing about Spark is, yes, they play the right notes, but do so with such abandon, adapting and improvising and enhancing, that the audience has to jump to their feet and cheer. The mood is closer to that at a rock concert. Departing St. Thomas’ Church, the last song and the refrains delivered by countertenor Valer Sabadus reverberated in the cranial space. 

    Sometimes words and music go together. Sometimes not. Sometimes one influences the other. Extract the Christian story from Bach’s St. John Passion, and you can get something familiar, yet startlingly different. Performed at the Paul Gerhardt Church, The Queer Passion has the music by Bach and the words by Thomas Höft. All the love, betrayal, politics, brutality and mass hysteria we know from the passion of Christ, but telling the stories of LGBTQI+ people who have been persecuted down through the ages.

    I don’t think I’ve ever heard a more passionate passion. Maybe it’s because this is a subject we feel closer to and in language as it’s spoken today. Soloists Markus Schäfer, Susanne Elmark, Yosemeh Adjei, Julian Habermann and Dietrich Henschel sang and interacted. Two choirs and the Art House 17 ensemble led by Michael Hell performed with high drama and emphasis, but it’s the quiet moments that bring tears to the eyes.

    Silence = Death could have been the subtitle. From the eighteenth century to the massacre at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando and the ongoing experience of sexual minorities in Chechnya and Lagos, stories about abuses often perpetrated in the name of Christianity, reminding that „Queer people are still in danger.“ 

    The effect: While transforming the piece, the Queer Passion paradoxically casts a stark light on the original. Transformation being the motto of this year’s Bachfest, the last performance on Day One was closer to the original – Bach’s Art of the Fugue – but performed not on a keyboard, but by a string quartet. Nadja Zwiener, Anna Dmitrieva, Magdalena Schenk-Bader and Anna Reisener played on instruments from 1729 and 1742 owned by the Thomaskirche. The performance was … unfathomable? Soaringly beautiful? Transcendental? The Art of the Fugue is a work where words and music part ways entirely.  

    Bach to the beginning

    A buzz of excitement in St. Thomas’ Church is extinguished by four imperious notes sounding out from the organ: B, A, C and H (German musical notation). Thomaskirche organist Johannes Lang launches into Franz Liszt’s Prelude and Fugue on the name B-A-C-H. Amazing: Liszt repeats and interweaves the not very catchy four-note theme a nearly ridiculous number of times, ramming it into the ground and taking it to the lofty heights. Over the top. Seriously? Say what you will, this piece certainly shows what an organ – and an organist – can do.

    Festival director Michael Maul addresses the audience, indicating what’s ahead in the coming eleven days and over 200 events for what he calls „the world’s largest Bach self-help group.“ His and the Leipzig mayor’s words sandwiched between musical selections concluding with the Kyrie and Gloria from the B Minor Mass. As is tradition, the opening featuring the aforementioned organist, members of the Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig and the St. Thomas Boy Choir in their sailor suits.

    Looking around, I’m reminded of something about this festival I’ve noticed before: I can’t think of any other venue of serious music where you see so many smiling faces. 

    So those are Rick’s picks of the day. A subjective choice. That’s the point I guess.

  • Peaceful Demonstration in Leipzig

    A small group of young instrumentalists plays an intricate piece with a familiar melody. A voice sounds out from somewhere – it’s a tenor on a balcony across the square. Others intone in harmony, growing in strength. A sheet of paper is distributed in the crowd waiting to enter St. Thomas’ Church for the opening of the Bachfest so that more can join in. The square is subverted with music under the imperious gaze of JSB. No law enforcement or security forces are called in.