News from Berlin

Presenting "The True Art" of Music at the Bachfest in Leipzig

June 19th, 2014
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News from Berlin - Is there a “true art” and what does it mean if there is? Carl Philipp Emanuel, who is the second surviving son of Johan Sebastian Bach, sought to set standards for the chaotic plethora of keyboard classical sounds. Living in Berlin, he left a mark in the musical history with his treatise, Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen (“An Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments”). This year’s Bachfest in Leipzig celebrates 300 years of Carl Phillip Emanuel’s birth by running a program along the line of the treatise’s “The True Art”.

The city of Leipzig hosted a similar event commemorating Bach’s works for the first time in 1904 for the Neue Bachgesellschaft, or Bach New Society. In 1908 the city organized an official Bach Festival, which has been running every year since then. The event, which lasts for a couple of days, commences with an opening concert conducted by the Thomaskantor – a boys choir in Leipzig. The Thomaskantor’s scurrent conductor, Gerog Chrisoph Biller, is the sixteenth conductor since Johann Sebastian Bach. There are about 100 independent events throughout the days of the Bachfest, which concludes with a closing concert of Bach’s Mass in B minor performed in the St Thomas Church.

This year the Bachfest runs from June 13 to June 22. For more information visit the festival’s official website at bach-leipzig.de.

 

News from Berlin – Berlin Global