9 June: Back to Bach

Another top musical target on our trip was a day tour to Leipzig to the annual Bach Festival. Choirs come from all over the world (the Wellington Bach Choir went one year) and sing in the locations where Bach lived and worked. Most famous is the Tomaskirche, where he was Music Director, but he also gave concerts at the Nikolaikirche and others.

This year’s theme was Bach’s “Cantatas”. These were devotional pieces sung in German (he was a Lutheran) expressing a strong personal relationship with Jesus - repentance for sin, pleading for salvation, joy and thanks for salvation. The congregation got to join in as well, in strong simple choral anthems. A small orchestra provided an accompaniment to the organ snd heightened the mood of the texts. We had booked for three cantatas sung in the Tomaskirche by the Emmanuel Choir of Boston.

Berlin to Leipzig is just over an hour by ICE high-speed train. We had an early start so needed a strong expresso at the station to wake us up!

Off the train, we walked to the City Information Office. We had booked a 2-hour tour “Bach around town” to fill in the time before the concert.

Our young lady guide was very knowlegeable about Bach and Leipzig, but also about Mendelssohn, Telemann, Schumann and Wagner, composers who also lived in the city.

Mendelssohn, who was an international star, created the role of the modern conductor-with baton - and rediscovered Bach’s music 75 years after Bach died.

We walked around most of central Leipzig, seeing Bach’s main church, the Tomaskirche. But after 2 1/2 hours wondered if we’d have to leave for our concert.

It was a great tour, very informative. Des was particularly interested in the role of the beautiful Nikolaikirche in the fall of East Germany. It was the Friday prayer meetings here in 1989 which grew into the wider protests that led to the breaching of the Berlin Wall.

However, the tour had no toilet stops. Also we had no time for lunch before the concert.

Like Donald Trump, the choir were loud & fast, and seemed to have no understanding of or sensitivity to what the intense devotional music they were singing meant.? Neither of us was engaged by the performance, which was disappointing - it should have been a highlight of the Berlin phase of our holiday.

To make matters worse, the organisers had interpolated some modern compositions between cantatas - one was so painfully discordant - and of course loud - Neil had his fingers in his ears!!

We raced from the Tomaskirche to catch our return train, only to find it was 45 minutes late. Fortunately, we also discovered they had also changed the platform.

Back in Berlin, we were both pretty had it, hence the blog happening today, our rest day!

Glad we went to Leipzig, known for many things besides Bach, but a bit miffed that the concert was not what we’d hoped.Read more