This is the 2023 archive of my daily stories, with an overview at User:Gerda Arendt/Story list. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:33, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
... and a selection here --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:02, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
January
edit
7 January 2023
editConcentricities,
a 2019 clarinet–cello–piano trio by Graham Waterhouse,
musically depicts a theme
of circular, spiraling, or oscillating concentric phenomena
in nature and human structures
Compositions by Graham Waterhouse
range from the beginning
of his String Sextet, Op. 1, in 1979
to the Fantasia Ucraina for two violins in 2022.
12 January 2023
editStanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre |
Volodymyr Kozhukhar,
the chief conductor
of the National Opera of Ukraine in Kyiv,
led Lysenko's opera Taras Bulba
and Shchedrin's ballet Carmen Suite.
Galina Pisarenko,
a soprano of Moscow's
Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre
for almost 30 years,
taught at the Moscow Conservatory
until her death at age 88.
13 January 2023
editd. 13 January 2012 |
Guido Dessauer,
a German executive and art collector,
registered more than 30 patents
in paper technology
and started the career of Horst Janssen
as a lithographer
20 January 2023
edit
In Mother and Child,
composed in 2002 by John Tavener
for the vocal ensemble Tenebrae,
organ and temple gong
enter for the climax.
21 January 2023
editElisabeth Waterhouse founded
the National Chamber Music Course summer school in 1974
and has managed it since.
Graham Waterhouse began
his String Sextet op. 1 in 1979,
and completed it 34 years later.
23 January 2023
editThe Messe in A by Christopher Tambling,
originally set for high voices,
proved so popular that a four-part version was commissioned.
Johannes Schröder composed an oratorio
honouring Katharina Kaspar,
who became a new saint in 2018.
27 January 2023
editMezzo-soprano Elena Manistina
stepped in on short notice for the premiere
of Tchaikovsky's The Enchantress at Oper Frankfurt.
Clytus Gottwald arranged compositions
for an a cappella group of up to 16 voices,
re-creating them "in a magical choral world".
19 July 2012
28 January 2023
editClytus Gottwald arranged compositions
for an a cappella group of up to 16 voices,
re-creating them "in a magical choral world".
The Romanesque church St. Peter
in Syburg, now a suburb of Dortmund,
is surrounded by a graveyard
with stones dating back to the ninth century.
29 January 2023
editClytus Gottwald arranged compositions
for an a cappella group of up to 16 voices,
re-creating them "in a magical choral world".
Gertrude Pitzinger,
who toured Europe and the United States singing Lieder,
recorded the alto part of Mozart's Requiem,
conducted by Ferenc Fricsay.
30 January 2023
editIn 1866 a Neogothic style school building
was erected for the Kreuzschule in Dresden,
which has educated members of
the choir of the Kreuzkirche since 1300.
Clytus Gottwald arranged compositions
for an a cappella group of up to 16 voices,
re-creating them "in a magical choral world".
31 January 2023
editIn Bach's chorale cantata
Ich hab in Gottes Herz und Sinn, BWV 92,
for Septuagesima, he created
five different settings for
five stanzas of the hymn by Paul Gerhardt.
Mezzo-soprano Elena Manistina
stepped in on short notice for the premiere
of Tchaikovsky's The Enchantress at Oper Frankfurt.
February
edit
1 February 2023
editNikolaus Herman based
the melody of his Christmas carol
"Lobt Gott, ihr Christen alle gleich"
on the Gregorian hymn
"Puer natus est nobis".
Mezzo-soprano Elena Manistina
stepped in on short notice for the premiere
of Tchaikovsky's The Enchantress
at Oper Frankfurt.
2 February 2023
editSoprano Melitta Muszely
appeared as the four women Hoffmann loves
in Felsenstein's production
at the Komische Oper Berlin in 1958,
and still sang recitals at age 80.
Bach's solo cantata
Ich habe genug, BWV 82,
based on the Canticle of Simeon,
has been recorded more than 100 times.
3 February 2023
editSoprano Melitta Muszely
appeared as the four women Hoffmann loves
in Felsenstein's production
at the Komische Oper Berlin in 1958,
and still sang recitals at age 80.
Composer and music director August Röckel,
who was active in the May Uprising in Dresden
along with his friend Richard Wagner,
was arrested and was the last prisoner released.
4 February 2023
editborn 4 February 1944 |
Michael Herrmann (pictured)
is founder-director of the Rheingau Musik Festival,
which holds about 150 concerts every season
in vineyards and historical buildings.
Soprano Melitta Muszely
appeared as the four women Hoffmann loves
in Felsenstein's production
at the Komische Oper Berlin in 1958,
and still sang recitals at age 80.
5 February 2023
editHans Krieger,
an award-winning German essayist,
influential in papers such as Die Zeit,
wrote the text for a Christmas cantata
by Graham Waterhouse that premieres today.
Soprano Melitta Muszely
appeared as the four women Hoffmann loves
in Felsenstein's production
at the Komische Oper Berlin in 1958,
and still sang recitals at age 80.
6 February 2023
editNicolas Joel,
general manager of the Paris Opera from 2009 to 2014,
directed Wagner's Ring in 1979
after having assisted Patrice Chéreau for the cycle's centenary.
Soprano Melitta Muszely
appeared as the four women Hoffmann loves
in Felsenstein's production
at the Komische Oper Berlin in 1958,
and still sang recitals at age 80.
7 February 2023
editJesus nahm zu sich die Zwölfe ('Jesus gathered the Twelve to Himself', is a church cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach, written for the last Sunday before Lent. He composed it as an audition piece for the position of director of church music in Leipzig, and he first performed it there in a church service at the Thomaskirche on 7 February 1723. The work begins with a scene from the Gospel in which Jesus predicts his suffering in Jerusalem, and is not understood by his disciples. Bach showed, setting the prescribed text of an unknown poet, that he mastered the composition of a dramatic scene, an expressive aria with obbligato oboe, a recitative with strings, an exuberant dance, and a chorale in the style of Johann Kuhnau, his predecessor in Leipzig. According to the Bach scholar Richard D. P. Jones, several elements of the work such as a "frame of biblical text and chorale around the operatic forms of aria and recitative" became standards for Bach's Leipzig cantatas and even his Passions. (Full article...)
8 February 2023
editAfter Domen Križaj from Slovenia
was a prize winner in the singing competition Neue Stimmen,
he moved to the Oper Frankfurt where he appeared
as Massenet's Albert and Mozart's Papageno.
9 February 2023
editIn Patrick Süskind's play
Der Kontrabaß,
the double bass in the title role
is a "constant handicap" to its player,
"humanly, socially, sexually, musically".
10 February 2023
editUkrainian actress Oksana Shvets,
who was killed in the 2022 invasion of Ukraine,
starred in the 2013 joint Ukrainian–Russian television family saga
House with Lilies alongside Russian actors.
11 February 2023
editDennis Russell Davies conducted
the premiere of the Fifth Symphony
Now and in the hour of death
by Heinz Winbeck,
which reflects Bruckner's Ninth Symphony
12 February 2023
editArvo Pärt began his choral composition
Da pacem Domine
(Give peace, Lord)
two days after the 2004 Madrid train bombings.
Max Reger composed
20 Responsories in English
for use in the American Lutheran church,
although he did not speak English.
13 February 2023
edit
Helene Wildbrunn,
a celebrated Wagnerian soprano
at the Vienna State Opera and La Scala,
began her career in 1907 as a contralto
at the Stadttheater Dortmund.
Richard Wagner
(22 May 1813 - 13 February 1883)
14 February 2023
edit
Alte Liebe (Old Love)
is a novel about a couple married for 40 years,
told by a couple married longer but separated,
with chapters written alternately
by wife and husband.
15 February 2023
editAfter George Alexander Albrecht
collapsed when conducting
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony
during a New Year's concert,
he returned to composing and began hospice work.
16 February 2023
editHans-Dieter Bader
(16 February 1938 - 18 June 2022)
performed the title role
of Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari's opera Sly,
recorded live at the Staatsoper Hannover,
"as written", while Plácido Domingo
had to cut and change the part.
17 February 2023
edit
Concert venues of the
Rheingau Musik Festival
include Eberbach Abbey,
Schloss Johannisberg
and Lorch.
28 June 2023
Bach: Mass in B minor
18 February 2023
edit
Robert Hammerstiel
(18 February 1933 - 23 November 2020)
wrapped Vienna's Ringturm tower
in a painting showing stations of human life
in simplified and brightly coloured figures.
19 February 2023
edit
"Geh aus, mein Herz, und suche Freud",
written by Paul Gerhardt
after the Thirty Years War,
was translated as
"Go Forth, My Heart, and Seek Delight".
20 February 2023
editThe journalist Johann Georg Reißmüller
(20 February 1932 – 10 December 2018),
a co-publisher of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,
is credited with playing an important part
in Germany's recognition of Croatia and Slovenia.
21 February 2023
editDutch baritone John Bröcheler (born 1945)
first sang concerts including world premieres,
but was "discovered" for opera in a role
of Donizetti's Maria Stuarda alongside Joan Sutherland.
22 February 2023
editOlivier Latry
(born 22 February 1962),
organist at Notre-Dame de Paris,
played a concert at St. Martin in Lorch am Rhein in 2019.
For his ordination, Georg Weissel wrote the text of the hymn
"Such, wer da will, ein ander Ziel"
to his friend's melody for a wedding song.
23 February 2023
editNele Hertling
(born 23 February 1934),
working for the Academy of Arts, Berlin,
brought innovative culture to the city
including the Tanz im August festival.
Tanz im August,
an annual international festival of contemporary dance in Berlin,
was founded by Nele Hertling in 1988.
24 February 2023
editThe choral music of Artemy Vedel,
who is regarded as one of the Golden Three composers of 18th-century Ukrainian classical music,
was censored but performed from handwritten copies.
The 1885 spiritual anthem
Prayer for Ukraine
was performed by Ukrainian Chorus Dumka of New York on Saturday Night Live.
25 February 2023
editThe 1641 edition
Selva morale e spirituale by Claudio Monteverdi
is considered his
"most significant anthology of liturgical works
since the Vespers in 1610".
26 February 2023
editThe art of Ruth-Margret Pütz
(26 February 1930 – 1 April 2019)
a leading coloratura soprano of the 1960s,
was published in a 2018 Recital,
including excerpts as Konstanze and Zerbinetta.
The 1885 spiritual anthem
Prayer for Ukraine
was performed by Ukrainian Chorus Dumka of New York
on Saturday Night Live.
27 February 2023
editMax Reger's Piano Concerto
was premiered by Frieda Hodapp in 1910,
but has rarely been performed since, due to its difficulty.
The choral music of Artemy Vedel,
who is regarded as one of the Golden Three composers
of 18th-century Ukrainian classical music,
was censored but performed from handwritten copies.
28 February 2023
editDoris Stockhausen's husband
dedicated several compositions to her,
beginning with Chöre für Doris in 1950 before they married.
born 1924 · 28 February 2021
Elisabeth Waterhouse
founded the National Chamber Music Course summer school in 1974
and has managed it since.
born 1933 · 21 January 2023
March
edit
1 March 2023
edit
In 2005
composer Krzysztof Penderecki
added a Ciaccona for strings
to his Polish Requiem,
begun in 1980.
2 March 2023
edit
In 1524, Elisabeth Cruciger's hymn
"Herr Christ, der einig Gotts Sohn"
was the only song by a female author
published in the Lutheran hymnal Erfurt Enchiridion.
The title page of the Erfurt Enchiridion,
a Lutheran hymnal from 1524 with 26 songs,
recommends using the handbook
"for continuous practice and contemplation".
3 March 2023
editThe Opernhaus Dortmund
was opened in 1966 with Der Rosenkavalier,
performed in Dortmund first in 1911.
Liselotte Hammes,
a soprano with the Cologne Opera,
appeared as Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier
at the Glyndebourne Festival
alongside Teresa Żylis-Gara in the title role
and Montserrat Caballé as the Marschallin.
4 March 2023
editThe poet, cartoonist, and satirist
F. W. Bernstein
(4 March 1938 – 20 December 2018)
was appointed
professor of caricature and comics
in Berlin in 1984,
the only such chair in the world at the time.
5 March 2023
editThe contralto Elisabeth Schärtel,
known for performing many Wagner roles at the Bayreuth Festival,
sang Verdi's Meg Page alongside Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as Falstaff.
6 March 2023
editSiegfried Vogel
(born 6 March 1937),
a bass at the Berlin State Opera from 1965,
appeared at the Metropolitan Opera in New York
and at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow
7 March 2023
editWilligis Jäger
(7 March 1924 – 20 March 2020),
a German Benedictine friar,
studied Zen for six years with Yamada Koun in Japan
and introduced it to his order.
Hans-Karl von Kupsch
(7 March 1937 – 26 April 2020),
who was instrumental in the unification
of the East and West German booksellers' associations,
ran a gallery of contemporary art together with his wife.
8 March 2023
editHana Blažíková
is a soprano
with the Bach Collegium Japan,
conducted by Masaaki Suzuki,
for the project to record the complete Bach cantatas
9 March 2023
editAzio Corghi
(9 March 1937 – 17 November 2022)
composed his second and third operas with author José Saramago,
– the second for La Scala in Milan,
and the third for a 1993 premiere at the Theater Münster
When the Theater Münster opened in 1956,
it was regarded as the first new theatre in Germany
after World War II.
10 March 2023
editDelores Ziegler,
who teaches voice at the University of Maryland,
appeared as Dorabella in Mozart's Così fan tutte
for her debut at La Scala, and in the film by Ponnelle and Harnoncourt.
11 March 2023
editJohn Rutter set Psalm 23 in
The Lord is my Shepherd
for choir and organ,
and later included it in his Requiem.
12 March 2023
edit
Odile Pierre
(12 March 1932 – 29 February 2020),
who became interested in the organ
at a recital by Marcel Dupré at the age of seven,
later served as the organist of La Madeleine in Paris
and played around 2,000 recitals herself.
13 March 2023
editHans Krieger
(13 March 1933 – 9 January 2023),
an award-winning German essayist,
influential in papers such as Die Zeit,
wrote the text for a Christmas cantata
by Graham Waterhouse that premieres today.
14 March 2023
editKyrie from Petite messe solennelle, premiered 14 March 1864 |
Rossini scored the last of his "sins of old age",
the Petite messe solennelle ,
for twelve singers, two pianos, and harmonium.
The German musicologist
Ludwig Finscher (14 March 1930 – 30 June 2020)
was the editor of Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart,
an encyclopedia in 28 volumes, placing
music in cultural, social, and historical context.
15 March 2023
editLorenzo Viotti
(born 15 March 1990)
conducted Massenet's Werther
in three productions in opera houses of three countries in 2017,
silently singing with the soloists.
16 March 2023
editVolodymyr Kozhukhar
(16 March 1941 – 3 December 2022),
the chief conductor of
the National Opera of Ukraine in Kyiv,
led Lysenko's opera Taras Bulba
and Shchedrin's ballet Carmen Suite.
17 March 2023
editArvo Pärt composed the motet
The Deer's Cry
on a commission from Louth, Ireland,
setting the conclusion of Saint Patrick's Breastplate,
"Christ with me".
18 March 2023
editChrista Wolf
(18 March 1929 – 1 December 2011)
wrote Der geteilte Himmel
in a "quest for personal integrity within a flawed system",
published in East Germany in 1963
and called a "socialist bestseller".
19 March 2023
editThe Requiem
of Max Reger
(19 March 1873 – 11 May 1916)
is a musical setting not of the Latin Requiem,
but of a poem "Requiem"
written by the dramatist Friedrich Hebbel
20 March 2023
editWhen Stefan Keil
(20 March 1958 – 16 December 2021)
moved to Yekaterinburg, Russia, as the German consul general,
one of his first appearances was
at the European Christmas market, dressed as Saint Nicholas.
21 March 2023
editJohann Sebastian Bach
([O.S.] 21 March 1685 – 28 July 1750)
wrote around 200 cantatas in German but only one,
Gloria in excelsis Deo, BWV 191,
in Latin.
Conductor Helmuth Rilling,
Gächinger Kantorei and Bach-Collegium Stuttgart
finished the first complete recording
of Bach's cantatas and oratorios
on the composer's 300th birthday, 21 March 1985.
22 March 2023
editThe soprano Margit Bokor
created the role of Zdenka in
Arabella by Richard Strauss
at the Semperoper in Dresden in 1933,
and performed the role
in the UK premiere at the Royal Opera House.
23 March 2023
editMaria Friesenhausen
(23 March 1932 – 31 July 2020)
sang soprano solo with the NDR Chor in the 1950s
and trained students of the University of Dortmund
for an opera performance in 2001.
24 March 2023
editSoprano Annette Dasch
(born 24 March 1976)
appeared as Elettra in Mozart's Idomeneo
at the reopening of the Cuvilliés Theatre,
where that opera had been premiered in 1781.
25 March 2023
editWie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, BWV 1 ,
Bach's chorale cantata
for the feast of the Annunciation,
was first performed on Palm Sunday.
26 March 2023
editArchitect Jörg Streli
(26 March 1940 – 13 February 2019)
and his two colleagues designed
the Sankt-Margarethen-Kapelle in Tyrol,
which rises like a tower on a circular floor.
27 March 2023
editThe Klassische Philharmonie Bonn,
a symphony orchestra founded and conducted
by Heribert Beissel
(27 March 1933 – 11 June 2021),
has a tradition of playing a series of concerts
at more than ten major halls in Germany.
28 March 2023
editTilge, Höchster, meine Sünden, BWV 1083,
is a sacred vocal composition by Johann Sebastian Bach,
a 1740s arrangement of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater from 1736,
with a text from Psalm 51.
29 March 2023
editThe soprano Leonore Kirschstein
(29 March 1933 – 26 February 2017)
appeared as Alice Ford,
with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as Falstaff.
30 March 2023
editComposer Jan Müller-Wieland
(born 30 April 1966)
called his first stage work,
premiered at the Munich Biennale in 1992,
a "Cabaret Farce for singers, pianists and percussionists".
31 March 2023
editThe Munich Biennale
is an opera festival created in 1988 by Hans Werner Henze,
focused on opera premieres of young composers.
Composer Jan Müller-Wieland
(born 30 April 1966)
called his first stage work,
premiered at the Munich Biennale in 1992,
a "Cabaret Farce for singers, pianists and percussionists".
April
edit
1 April 2023
editThe soprano Rotraud Hansmann
(born 1 April 1940)
performed six roles in three Monteverdi operas
conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt,
including Euridice in L'Orfeo.
2 April 2023
edit
The Alchymic Quartet
is a string quartet by Graham Waterhouse,
to be performed alongside chemical experiments
of Andrew Szydlo,
his former teacher at Highgate School.
3 April 2023
editRenate Behle
(born 3 April 1945)
made her operatic debut in 1968
and appeared as Sara in the premiere of Giorgio Battistelli's Lot
at the Staatsoper Hannover in 2017.
4 April 2023
editHans-Karl von Kupsch,
who was instrumental in the unification
of the East and West German booksellers' associations,
ran a gallery of contemporary art together with his wife.
Karlheinz Oswald created sculptures
of Cardinal Volk, Pierre de Coubertin and Hildegard of Bingen.
5 April 2023
editMarjon Lambriks
(born 5 April 1949),
who studied voice in the Netherlands
with Paula Lindberg (both pictured)
and made a career in Vienna,
recorded La traviata alongside Pavarotti.
6 April 2023
editIn a motet for Maundy Thursday,
Tristis est anima mea,
Jesus says in Gethsemane
"Sad is my soul even unto death".
7 April 2023
editGottfried August Homilius wrote
Passions for Good Friday services
during his time as music director of
the Church of the Holy Cross in Dresden.
Bach's St Matthew Passion is structured
in 67 movements, according to the NBA,
and tells the Passion based on
the Gospel of Matthew,
Picander's contemporary poetry, and chorales.
8 April 2023
editA chorale fantasia on
"O Mensch, bewein dein Sünde groß"
(O man, bewail thy sins so great)
by Sebald Heyden
concludes Part I of
Bach's St Matthew Passion.
9 April 2023
editA 2009 recording of Louis Vierne's
Messe solennelle
for choir and two organs at Saint-Sulpice,
where it was first performed in 1901,
was called "musical and spiritual time-travel".
10 April 2023
editThe opening chorus of Bach's
cantata for the Second Day of Easter,
Erfreut euch, ihr Herzen, BWV 66 ,
has been termed
"one of the longest and most exhilarating of Bach's early works".
11 April 2023
editHeinz Hennig
founded the Knabenchor Hannover in 1950
and conducted the boys' choir until 2001.
12 April 2023
editGünther Leib
(born 12 April 1927),
who often sang at the Halle Handel Festival,
was called a "first rate Beckmesser" by The New York Times
when he first appeared at the Metropolitan Opera.
13 April 2023
edit"Handel's Messiah
(premiered in Dublin on 13 April 1742)
is among the most frequently performed
and best-loved works in all choral music."
(Brian Boulton, 2011)
14 April 2023
editEleonore Schönborn
(14 April 1920 – 25 February 2022),
who had to leave Czechoslovakia in 1945 with two young children,
received an Austrian award in 2013
for cultural and social improvement.
15 April 2023
editThe melody of the Christian hymn
"Ik sta voor U in leegte en gemis"
(I stand before You in emptiness and loss)
is sometimes printed without bar lines,
reflecting the singer's insecurity and questions.
text by Huub Oosterhuis
(1 November 1933 – 9 April 2023)
16 April 2023
editErich Korngold's opera Die tote Stadt
had simultaneous premieres
in Cologne and Hamburg in 1920, one with
Johanna Geisler
as Marietta
and her husband Otto Klemperer conducting.
Ik sta voor U in leegte en gemis
in memory of Huub Oosterhuis
17 April 2023
editThe Lichtental Church,
consecrated in 1730 to the Fourteen Holy Helpers,
is known as the Schubertkirche,
because Schubert was baptised
and conducted his sacred music there.
Herr, unser Herr, wie bist du zugegen
in memory of Huub Oosterhuis
18 April 2023
editA song of God's presence,
written in 1965 in Dutch by Huub Oosterhuis,
became part of the first common German Catholic hymnal,
and was retained in the second by popular demand.
"Herr, unser Herr, wie bist du zugegen"
is a German hymn translating a Dutch · "Lied van Gods aanwezigheid"
(song of God's presence)" written in 1965 by Huub Oosterhuis.
19 April 2023
editComposer Graham Waterhouse was the cellist
in a performance of his string trio
Zeichenstaub
at his former school,
playing the U.K. premiere
with two members of the Münchner Philharmoniker.
20 April 2023
editJohn Eliot Gardiner
(born 20 April 1943)
performed Bach's cantatas for Reformation Day
in the Schloßkirche, Wittenberg,
as part of the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage,
including
Gott der Herr ist Sonn und Schild, BWV 79.
21 April 2023
editThe art photographers
Anna and Bernhard Blume
created Kitchen Frenzy and Pure Reason.
(A.B. 21 April 1936 – 18 June 2020)
22 April 2023
editFor a rare performance of the St Matthew Passion
by 18th-century composer Homilius in 2023,
conductor Clemens Bosselmann
had to track down handwritten sheet music.
Hans Uwe Hielscher played
the 1500th weekly organ recital during market time
at the Marktkirche in Wiesbaden
in a series he initiated some 30 years earlier.
23 April 2023
editErhard Egidi
(23 April 1929 – 8 September 2014)
conducted at the Neustädter Kirche both
the first performance after more than 300 years
of a funeral music by the church's first organist
and Bach's Mass in B minor.
Tenor Martin Petzold
(25 June 1955 – 19 April 2023)
a former member of the boys' choir Thomanerchor,
was a singer of Bach's Evangelist parts with the group.
24 April 2023
editMatti Lehtinen
(24 April 1922 – 16 August 2022),
a baritone of the Finnish National Opera
and professor of singing at the Sibelius Academy,
was the voice of God at age 93.
25 April 2023
editThe concert choir Schiersteiner Kantorei,
founded 50 years ago in Wiesbaden-Schierstein,
performed Bach's St Matthew Passion in the Marktkirche.
Tenor Martin Petzold
(25 June 1955 – 19 April 2023)
a former member of the boys' choir Thomanerchor,
sang Bach's Evangelist parts with the group.
26 April 2023
editContralto Marga Höffgen
(26 April 1921 – 7 July 1995),
known as a Bach singer for Karajan
and as Erda in Bayreuth,
recorded Max Reger's Requiem compositions.
27 April 2023
editAdalbert Kraus
(born 27 April 1937)
performed the tenor part
in Bach's Easter Oratorio,
Kommt, eilet und laufet (Come, hasten and run).
Poèmes pour Mi
is a song cycle by Olivier Messiaen
(10 December 1908 – 27 April 1992),
who set his own poems
for a grand soprano dramatique and orchestra,
and dedicated it to his wife.
28 April 2023
editGiuseppe Verdi
combined in
Quattro pezzi sacri
four sacred vocal compositions,
including an
Ave Maria
on an enigmatic scale for solo voices
and a Te Deum.
29 April 2023
editHana Blažíková is a soprano
with the Bach Collegium Japan, conducted by
Masaaki Suzuki
(born 29 April 1954),
for the project to record the complete Bach cantatas.
30 April 2023
editBach was only in his twenties
when he composed the cantata
Christ lag in Todes Banden, BWV 4,
for Easter,
using in seven movements
the words and tune
of Martin Luther's Easter chorale.
May
edit
1 May 2023
editFrancis Poulenc composed
Litanies à la Vierge Noire,
a French litany to the Black Virgin
at Rocamadour,
after a pilgrimage to the shrine.
During the last decade,
Lance Ryan
(born 1 May 1971)
appeared as Siegfried
at three Bayreuth Festivals.
2 May 2023
editManfred Weiss,
who taught composition
at the Musikhochschule Dresden
from 1959 to 1997,
composed a cantata after the Book of Revelation
premiered by the Dresdner Kreuzchor
conducted by Roderich Kreile.
3 May 2023
editHans Stadlmair
(3 May 1929 – 13 February 2019),
conductor of the Münchener Kammerorchester for almost four decades,
in 1971 premiered Wilhelm Killmayer's Fin al punto,
of which the composer said,
"The calm already contains the catastrophe".
4 May 2023
editThe tenor Kurt Huber
(born 4 May 1937)
sang the Evangelist in Bach's Ascension Oratorio
Lobet Gott in seinen Reichen, BWV 11,
composed for the feast of the Ascension of 275 years ago.
5 May 2023
editThe 1965 song
"Wie als een God wil leven",
written by Huub Oosterhuis, was listed in 2013
as a hymn in German successful with young people.
The rhythm of
"Solang es Menschen gibt auf Erden",
to a Dutch hymn translated into German,
has been compared to a tango.
6 May 2023
edit
7 May 2023
edit
8 May 2023
editMax Reger dedicated Der Einsiedler
to conductor Philipp Wolfrum and his choir,
but they performed the premiere only after the composer's death,
together with his Requiem.
9 May 2023
editThe prolific composer
and Westminster Cathedral conductor
Colin Mawby
(9 May 1936 – 24 November 2019)
said,
"I cannot write choral music
unless I work with choirs
... I have to write for particular people".
He wrote the Bonifatiusmess for the 150th anniversary of Chor von St. Bonifatius in Wiesbaden in 2012, then conducted by Gabriel Dessauer.
10 May 2023
editIn one concert, bassoonist Lyndon Watts
premiered Bernd Redmann's Migrant,
and played Jörg Duda's first Finnish Quartet,
which he had commissioned,
and the Bassoon Quintet of Graham Waterhouse,
which he had premiered.
11 May 2023
editThe late-Gothic church
St. Lamberti in Hildesheim
was rebuilt after destruction in World War II,
but a southern annex was kept in ruins
as a memorial.
12 May 2023
editRaimund Hoghe
(12 May 1949 – 14 May 2021),
who was awarded the German Dance Prize in 2020,
made a self-portrait documentary film Der Buckel (The Hunchback).
13 May 2023
editKari Løvaas
(born 13 May 1939)
appeared in the premiere of Orff's De temporum fine comoedia
at the Salzburg Festival.
14 May 2023
editBach began his cantata,
Wahrlich, wahrlich, ich sage euch, BWV 86,
(first performed on 14 May 1724),
with a quotation from the Farewell discourse,
sung by the bass as the vox Christi.
15 May 2023
editThe Polish soprano
Zofia Kilanowicz
(born 15 May 1963)
appeared as Roxana in Szymanowski's King Roger in Paris,
and recorded Górecki's Symphony of Sorrowful Songs.
16 May 2023
editFaustas Latėnas
(16 May 1956 – 3 November 2020),
vice-minister of Lithuania's Ministry of Culture,
composed incidental music, film scores,
and a string quartet subtitled "In loving memory".
17 May 2023
editGünter Wewel
(29 November 1934 – 9 May 2023),
for around 30 years operatic bass
at the Opernhaus Dortmund,
presented the television series Kein schöner Land,
portraying regions in Europe filmed at the locations.
19 May 2023
editBass-baritone Stephen Varcoe
(born 19 May 1949)
recorded Bach cantatas with the Monteverdi Choir,
including Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, BWV 140.
20 May 2023
editPoetess
Christiana Mariana von Ziegler
ended her text for Bach's cantata
Also hat Gott die Welt geliebt, BWV 68,
for Pentecost Monday
with a quotation from the Gospel?
21 May 2023
editThe art of
Irma Blank,
of "drawing languages without words"
and including sounds,
was recognised in the 1970s
but fell into obscurity until a rediscovery in the 2010s.
22 May 2023
editMaria Mies
(6 February 1931 – 15 May 2023)
from a small village in the Vulkaneifel
studied the position of women first in India
and cofounded
the first women's shelter in Germany.
23 May 2023
editJohann Sebastian Bach reworked music
from more than three decades earlier
for the central piece Crucifixus
in the symmetrical structure of his
Mass in B minor.
24 May 2023
editFranz Schubert dedicated compositions to
Cathinka Buchwieser
(24 May 1789 – 9 July 1828),
a soprano who appeared in Vienna
as Mozart's Sesto and Elvira,
and as Ferdinando Paer's Achille and Leonora.
25 May 2023
editJubilate and Te Deum
from the
Morning, Evening and Communion Service in B-flat
by Charles Villiers Stanford
were first performed in Cambridge
on 25 May 1879.
26 May 2023
editThe text for Bach's last cantata
in his second year in Leipzig,
Es ist ein trotzig und verzagt Ding, BWV 176,
reflects the meeting of Jesus and Nicodemus.
27 May 2023
editThe Easter composition
Surrexit a mortuis
(He rose from the dead)
was scored for choir and two organs
by Charles-Marie Widor,
the organist at Saint-Sulpice in Paris?
28 May 2023
editJohann Sebastian Bach
marked to repeat the opening chorus
of the cantata for Pentecost,
Erschallet, ihr Lieder, erklinget, ihr Saiten!
BWV 172,
after the final chorale.
29 May 2023
editPoetess
Christiana Mariana von Ziegler
ended her text for Bach's cantata
Also hat Gott die Welt geliebt, BWV 68,
for Pentecost Monday
with a quotation from the Gospel.
30 May 2023
editOn 30 May 1723,
Johann Sebastian Bach
assumed the office of Thomaskantor in Leipzig,
presenting his first new cantata,
Die Elenden sollen essen, BWV 75,
in the St. Nicholas Church
on the first Sunday after Trinity.
31 May 2023
editMezzo-soprano
Eva Randová
was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award
for her performance as the Kostelnička Buryjovka
in Janáček's Jenůfa at the Royal Opera House.
June
edit
1 June 2023
editJavier Álvarez
(8 May 1956 – 23 May 2023)
composed his first electroacoustic music,
Temazcal,
in 1984 while studying in London,
using a pair of maracas
against a complex electroacoustic backdrop.
2 June 2023
editThe Kölner Domchor
from the Cologne Cathedral
sang Palmeri's Misa a Buenos Aires
at a 2013 festival in Rome dedicated to Pope Francis,
with the composer at the piano.
3 June 2023
editMichael Hampe
(3 June 1935 – 18 November 2022),
who directed the Cologne Opera for 20 years,
was the stage director for the world premiere
of Henze's adaptation of Monteverdi's Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria
at the Salzburg Festival
4 June 2023
editErasmus Schöfer
(4 June 1931 – 7 June 2022)
chronicled the resistance in Germany,
from the protests of 1968
to German reunification,
in a tetralogy of novels.
5 June 2023
editIn Strauss' Elektra,
Aile Asszonyi
was said to be convincing
as a woman close to madness.
6 Jun 2023
editBach has
a trumpet tell God's glory in cantata
Die Himmel erzählen die Ehre Gottes, BWV 76,
first performed in the Thomaskirche
on 6 June 1723,
but oboe d'amore and viola da gamba
express "brotherly devotion".
7 June 2023
editKurt Widmer
(28 December 1940 – 31 May 2023),
a baritone and influential professor in Basel,
sang as a soloist with Gemischter Chor Zürich between 1967 and 1992,
from Bach's Gott der Herr ist Sonn und Schild, BWV 79,
to Suter's Le Laudi,
and recorded new song cycles by György Kurtág.
8 June 2023
editMozart composed his motet
Ave verum corpus
for the church choir of
St. Stephan in Baden
on 17 June 1791,
for the Feast of Corpus Christi.
9 June 2023
editHaroun and the Sea of Stories,
an opera by Charles Wuorinen
(9 June 1938 – 11 March 2020),
is based on a children's novel
by Salman Rushdie
about free imagination in battle with thought control.
10 June 2023
editHanns-Martin Schneidt
became head of an academy of church music in 1955 at age 25,
of the Münchener Bach-Chor in 1984,
and of a symphony orchestra in Japan in 2007.
11 June 2023
editJesu, meine Freude
(Jesus, my joy),
a motet by Bach,
has a complex symmetrical structure
in which six hymn stanzas
alternate with five Bible verses.
12 June 2023
edit"Geh aus, mein Herz, und suche Freud",
written by Paul Gerhardt
after the Thirty Years War,
was translated as
"Go forth, my heart, and seek delight".
13 June 2023
editTenor Kurt Equiluz
(13 June 1929 – 20 June 2022)
was the Evangelist
in the first recording of Bach's St John Passion
on period instruments with the Concentus Musicus Wien, Vienna.
14 June 2023
editMezzo-soprano Hedwig Fassbender,
who also appeared in soprano roles such as Wagner's Isolde,
has been an influential voice teacher in Frankfurt.
15 June 2023
editThe oboist and composer
Rolf Riehm
(born 15 June 1937)
taught music theory in Frankfurt from 1974 to 2000
and wrote an opera, Sirenen, for a 2014 premiere at the Oper Frankfurt.
16 June 2023
editIn 2016 Pascal Rophé
conducted works by Henri Dutilleux
to celebrate the composer's centenary,
including Tout un monde lointain... and Le temps l'horloge.
17 June 2023
editThe bass-baritone Albert Dohmen
(born 17 June 1956)
appeared as Berg's Wozzeck at the Salzburg Festival in 1997,
and as Wagner's Pogner at La Scala in 2017.
18 June 2023
editJörg Faerber
(18 June 1929 – 13 September 2022)
was the artistic director of the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra Heilbronn
for more than four decades
and recorded piano concertos by Shostakovich and Haydn with Martha Argerich.
19 June 2023
editWith compositions such as Con brio
and Babylon,
clarinetist Jörg Widmann
(born 19 June 1973)
was ranked the third-most-performed
contemporary composer in 2018.
20 June 2023
editIn his Viola Sonata
entitled Sonata ebraica (Hebrew Sonata),
Graham Waterhouse quotes the Yiddish song
"Oyfn Pripetshik".
21 June 2023
editGabriele Schnaut
(24 February 1951 – 19 June 2023)
recorded alto parts in Bach cantatas in the 1970s,
and appeared as Waltraute and Second Norne
in the Jahrhundertring film in 1980,
as Isolde in 1985,
and as Turandot in 2002.
22 June 2023
editCornel Țăranu
(20 June 1934 – 18 June 2023),
a Romanian composer, musicologist and
conductor of a chamber orchestra for contemporary music,
completed unfinished scores by George Enescu.
23 June 2023
editJosef Protschka, who sang as a soloist
in Stockhausen's Gesang der Jünglinge
at age 12, later appeared in leading tenor roles
in the Mozart cycle staged by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle at the Cologne Opera.
24 June 2023
editThe concert venues of the
Rheingau Musik Festival
have included Eberbach Abbey,
Schloss Johannisberg and St. Martin, Lorch,
from the beginning.
25 June 2023
editThe Company of Heaven,
Benjamin Britten's 1937 composition
about angels
for speakers, soloists, choir and orchestra,
contains "metrical spoken (shouted) male chorus".
26 June 2023
editAlte Liebe (Old Love)
is a novel about a couple married for 40 years,
told by a couple married longer but separated,
with chapters written alternately
by Elke Heidenreich and
Bernd Schroeder
(6 June 1944 – 18 June 2023).
27 June 2023
editKarlheinz Stockhausen dedicated several compositions to
Doris Stockhausen
(28 February 1924 – 20 June 2023)
beginning with Chöre für Doris in 1950
before they married.
28 June 2023
editJohann Sebastian Bach
reworked music from
more than three decades earlier
for the central piece
Crucifixus
in the symmetrical structure of his
Mass in B minor.
29 June 2023
editInternational opera singer
Soňa Červená
won the Alfréd Radok Award for Best Actress
when she was 83 years old.
30 June 2023
editThe 1968 album Machine Gun by
Peter Brötzmann
(6 March 1941 – 22 June 2023),
titled after his nickname, became
"one of the landmark albums
of 20th-century free jazz".
July
edit
1 July 2023
editBenjamin Britten wrote out the Latin text for
Cantata academica,
commissioned by Paul Sacher for the quincentenary of the University of Basel
and premiered 1 July 1960,
in one of his old German exercise books.
2 July 2023
editThe Missa brevis in B-flat,
a mass for mixed choir, trumpets, trombones, tubular bells and organ
by Christopher Tambling,
was premiered by 1,400 singers
at St. Maria in Landau in 2014.
3 July 2023
editRachel Yakar
(3 March 1936 – 24 June 2023),
a French soprano based for decades at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein,
appeared in the title role of Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea
in the Oper Zürich production and film
conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt.
4 July 2023
editCountertenor Christopher Lowrey
took part in the world premiere of Brett Dean's Hamlet
in Glyndebourne in 2017,
and moved with the production to Australia
and the Metropolitan Opera.
5 July 2023
editDiana Tishchenko,
a violinist from Ukraine,
played Skoryk's Melody
on a tour of the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra
to Germany
in April 2022.
6 July 2023
editIn 2016,
Edition Güntersberg
published 12 Fantasias for Viola da Gamba
by Telemann
that had been lost.
7 July 2023
editWolkentanz,
a leading Hanoverian stallion at the Celle State Stud,
sired 21 licensed stallions.
8 July 2023
editThe Twelve Fantasias for Viola da Gamba solo,
published by the composer
Georg Philipp Telemann in 1735, were believed lost
but published again in 2016.
Leonore von Zadow-Reichling and Günter von Zadow
received the first biennial Abel Prize of Köthen
for their efforts to retrieve and publish
compositions by Carl Friedrich Abel.
9 July 2023
editThe a cappella
ensemble amarcord,
five former members of the Thomanerchor,
won the CARA award "Best classical album"
again in 2010,
for Rastlose Liebe (Restless Love).
10 July 2023
editIn Bio's Bahnhof,
a German live music talk show
presented by
Alfred Biolek
(10 July 1934 – 23 July 2021)
in a former train depot,
Kate Bush made her first television appearance.
11 July 2023
editFrank Beermann
conducted the first recording
of Bruno Maderna's Requiem,
the German premiere
of Péter Eötvös's opera Love and Other Demons
at the Chemnitz Opera,
and Beethoven's Fidelio in 2021.
12 July 2023
editDirector Frank Stähle
(12 July 1942 – 10 December 2015)
revived the choir and orchestra
of Dr. Hoch's Konservatorium
and conducted them in Mozart's Requiem
for the centenary of the Lutherkirche
in Wiesbaden.
13 July 2023
editThe string quintet Haven of Mysteries
by Anthony Gilbert
(26 July 1934 – 5 July 2023),
who taught composition both
at the Royal Northern College of Music and in Australia,
was premiered with the Arditti Quartet in Wigmore Hall in 2015.
14 July 2023
editGraham Clark
(10 November 1941 – 6 July 2023)
appeared at the Bayreuth Festival in 16 seasons,
in 1988 as Loge and Mime in the Ring cycle conducted by Daniel Barenboim.
15 July 2023
editVioleta Hemsy de Gainza
(25 January 1929 – 7 July 2023),
president of the
Latin American Forum of Musical Education
from its foundation in 1995,
taught generations of students, and said:
"Learning music is a human right".
16 July 2023
edit
17 July 2023
editThe title role of Boris Blacher's last opera,
Yvonne, Prinzessin von Burgund,
is performed by a mute dancer.
18 July 2023
editJohann Sebastian Bach
may have reused earlier music
for his cantata
Erforsche mich, Gott, und erfahre mein Herz,
BWV 136,
for the eighth Sunday after Trinity
on 18 July 1723.
19 July 2023
editMartin Janus
wrote the original lyrics of "Jesu, meiner Seelen Wonne",
which Bach used in
Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben, BWV 147,
in a setting known as Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring.
20 July 2023
editWhen Heide Simonis
(4 July 1943 – 12 July 2023),
minister of finance in Schleswig-Holstein from 1988,
became minister-president there,
she was the first woman to serve
as head of a state government in Germany.
21 July 2023
editThe walls of the Kronberg Academy's
Casals Forum,
opened in 2022,
are curved and covered with wood in a manner
reminiscent of a string instrument.
22 July 2023
editThe Empress Elisabeth Bridge ,
a 1855 chain bridge over the Elbe
connecting Tetschen
to the railroad to Dresden,
was named in honor of the newly married
Elisabeth of Austria.
23 July 2023
editValentin Gheorghiu
(21 March 1928 – 17 July 2023),
later pianist and composer,
won the prize for the best performance
of Enescu's Violin Sonata No. 3
at the first
George Enescu International Competition
in 1958, with his brother Ștefan as the violinist.
24 July 2023
editSingers Anne Sofie von Otter and
Christian Gerhaher
(born 24 July 1969)
recorded music written in
the concentration camp of Terezín
by artists such as
Ilse Weber, Hans Krása,
Pavel Haas and Viktor Ullmann.
25 July 2023
editAfter
Tenebrae
received the Rheingau Musikpreis
during a concert at Eberbach Abbey,
they performed Talbot's Path of Miracles,
a 2005 one-hour work for choir a cappella
inspired by the Camino de Santiago.
26 July 2023
editRomanian musicologist
Cornel Țăranu
(20 June 1934 – 18 June 2023)
completed unfinished scores by George Enescu
that Enescu did not wish to publish.
27 July 2023
editIn 1973
Luten Petrowsky
played the saxophone in a quartet
that made the first record
with jazz musicians from
both East and West Germany.
28 July 2023
editSilvana Lattmann,
biologist, poet and author,
published the memoir
Nata il 1918
in 2019.
29 July 2023
editRhythm Is It!
is a 2004 documentary film
about 250 public school students
trained by Royston Maldoom to dance
Stravinsky's Le Sacre du printemps
with the Berlin Philharmonic.
30 July 2023
editPaul Gerhardt's song
of thanks and praise
"Nun danket all und bringet Ehr"
was first published
along with 17 of his other hymns
in 1647,
during the Thirty Years' War.
31 July 2023
editA French team,
with Patrice Chéreau and Pierre Boulez,
created the
Jahrhundertring
of Richard Wagner's Ring cycle
at the centenary Bayreuth Festival in 1976,
causing "a near-riot".
August
edit
1 August 2023
editMartin Walser's
Ein fliehendes Pferd
(Runaway Horse),
his most successful book with readers and critics,
was adapted for the screen
in 1986 by Peter Beauvais,
and again in 2007 by Rainer Kaufmann.
2 August 2023
editAndris Nelsons conducted
Bartok's Viola Concerto
and Mahler's Fifth Symphony
in the final concert with his
Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie.
pictured:
Jonathon Heyward announcing on 3 March 2022
at the Stadttheater Minden that the concert
(which included Stavinsky's The Firebird)
was dedicated to
the victims of the Russian invasion into Ukraine
3 August 2023
editKaiser Wilhelm II
called the
Kurhaus in Wiesbaden
"the most beautiful spa in the world"
at the opening ceremony.
Beethoven: Violin Concerto
4 August 2023
editFelix Mendelssohn
first composed the motet
Denn er hat seinen Engeln befohlen
(For He shall give His angels charge)
for an eight-part choir,
then included it with orchestra
in Elijah.
5 August 2023
editNancy Van de Vate's opera
Quiet at the Western Front
was performed at the
New York City Opera.
6 August 2023
editAfter the Ukrainian soprano
Olga Bezsmertna
(born 6 August 1983)
won the Neue Stimmen competition in 2011,
she was engaged at the Vienna State Opera.
7 August 2023
editIgor Stravinsky
said of his cousin and first wife,
Yekaterina "Katya",
that they were
"closer than lovers sometimes are".
8 August 2023
editMariana Sîrbu,
who played first violin in a string quartet
that she founded as a student in Bucharest in 1967
and moved to Ireland,
was concertmaster of I Musici from 1993 to 2003.
9 August 2023
editThe conductor of the
Leningrad premiere of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7
on 9 August 1942 while the city was under siege,
performed by the surviving musicians of the Leningrad Radio Orchestra
supplemented with military performers, concluded:
"we triumphed over the soulless Nazi war machine".
10 August 2023
editKlesie Kelly,
soprano and academic voice teacher in Cologne,
recorded love songs for voices and instrumental soloists
with tenor Ian Partridge.
11 August 2023
editSoprano Heidi Grant Murphy,
who has given over 200 performances at the Metropolitan Opera,
said that becoming a singer
"takes work on your psyche, your innermost being".
12 August 2023
editThe Überwasserkirche,
a Gothic hall church in Münster,
was the location
of the second of three sermons held in 1941
by Bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen
in defiance of the Nazi regime.
13 August 2023
editThe "extreme lightness and luminous agility" of
Michael McCown's voice
in the roles of
Britten's Tempter and Nebuchadnezzar
has been likened to that of Peter Pears.
14 August 2023
editCountertenor David Erler
was one of five singers invited by amarcord
for the performance of Monteverdi's Vespers
as the annual Marienvesper
of the Rheingau Musik Festival in Eberbach Abbey.
15 August 2023
editAfter an absence of four years,
the Inkpot Madonna,
holding a naked Baby Jesus with quill in hand,
returns to the Hildesheim Cathedral today.
Countertenor David Erler
was one of five singers invited by amarcord
for the performance of Monteverdi's Vespers
as the annual Marienvesper
of the Rheingau Musik Festival in Eberbach Abbey.
16 August 2023
editHans-Jochen Jaschke,
who was responsible
for ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue
as an auxiliary bishop of Hamburg,
represented the Catholic Church
in the media.
17 August 2023
editMarie Lehmann,
one of the Rhinemaidens
at the first Bayreuth Festival
(13–17 August 1876),
sang the soprano solo
in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony
for the groundbreaking
of the Bayreuth Festival Theatre.
18 August 2023
editSoprano Rosa Lamoreaux,
who recorded Bach's Mass in B minor
with The Bach Choir of Bethlehem and at the Carmel Bach Festival,
won the 2009 Washington Area Music Award as classical vocal soloist.
Mahler: Second Symphony
19 August 2023
editVilde Frang
(born 19 August 1986)
played Sarasate's Carmen Fantasy,
with Mariss Jansons
conducting the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra,
at age 13.
Mahler: Fourth Symphony
20 August 2023
editRenata Scotto
made her opera debut as La traviata in Milan,
portrayed Madama Butterfly
for her debut at the Met,
and was Mimi
in the first Live from the Met telecast
in 1977, alongside Luciano Pavarotti.
21 August 2023
editHans Stadlmair,
conductor of the Münchener Kammerorchester
for almost four decades, in 1971 premiered
Wilhelm Killmayer's Fin al punto,
of which the composer said,
"The calm already contains the catastrophe".
22 August 2023
editClaude Debussy
(22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918)
described his
Cello Sonata,
composed within a few weeks
in July 1915 at a Normandy seaside town,
in a letter to his publisher Durand
as of "almost classical form".
23 August 2023
editVera Nemirova
staged Lulu at the Salzburg Festival
and The Ring for the Oper Frankfurt.
24 August 2023
editConductor Roland Bader
(born 24 August 1938)
recorded late choral works by Max Reger,
including his Hebbel Requiem,
and the First Symphony by Richard Wetz.
25 August 2023
editThomas Gabriel
(born 25 August 1957)
composed the Missa mundi
for the 2005 World Youth Day,
representing the continents
in style and instrumentation
with pan flute, sitar,
drums and didgeridoo.
26 August 2023
editSoon after starting her career at the Metropolitan Opera,
Gwendolyn Killebrew
(August 26, 1941 – December 24, 2021)
appeared as a valkyrie in Wagner's Die Walküre
in a live broadcast
alongside Birgit Nilsson in the title role.
Mahler: Ninth Symphony
27 August 2023
editThe First Symphony "Music on Open Strings"
by Gloria Coates
was the first composition by a woman
in the Musica Viva series of Bayerischer Rundfunk.
28 August 2023
editRehearsing
Dvořák's Eighth Symphony,
conductor Rafael Kubelík said:
"Gentlemen,
in Bohemia
the trumpets never call to battle –
they always call to the dance!".
heard 2013
29 August 2023
editWhen Berit Lindholm
(18 October 1934 – 12 August 2023),
a dramatic soprano of the Royal Swedish Opera,
appeared as Chrysothemis
at the Royal Opera House,
a reviewer described her as
"tall, and remarkably slim for so epic a voice".
Berit Lindholm
performed as Wagner's Isolde
at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow
in a pioneering tour of the Vienna State Opera
in 1971.
30 August 2023
editBeethoven's
Third Cello Sonata,
first performed in 1809,
has been described
as the first sonata for piano and cello
to treat the instruments as equal partners.
16 December 2020
(quirky in the all-Beethoven set)
31 August 2023
editOf thrice-married composer
Alma Mahler
(31 August 1879 – 11 December 1964)
Tom Lehrer crooned,
"Alma, tell us!
All modern women are jealous
Which of your magical wands
got you Gustav and Walter and Franz".
September
edit
1 September 2023
editLe Vin herbé,
a 1942 composition by Frank Martin
of the Tristan and Iseult story
for twelve vocalists,
seven strings and piano,
was staged at the 1948 Salzburg Festival.
2 September 2023
editThe concert venues of the
Rheingau Musik Festival
have included Eberbach Abbey
from the beginning,
where the final concert of 2023
is Bruckner's Seventh Symphony
played by the Gewandhausorchester
conducted by Herbert Blomstedt
(born 1927).
3 September 2023
editGiuseppe Verdi's
secular cantata
Inno delle nazioni,
his first collaboration with Arrigo Boito,
contains three national anthems.
4 September 2023
editIn her 2021 composition with string orchestra
This too shall pass
Raminta Šerkšnytė used
a vibraphone for the flow of time,
a violin for the transience of humans,
and a "heavenly" cello.
5 September 2023
editWhen Robert Hale
appeared as Wagner's Wotan at the Kennedy Center in 1989,
a reviewer noted that he captured "the spirit,
from tragic grandeur to ironic detachment,
from flooding tenderness to grim rage".
6 September 2023
editNerotalanlagen,
a park along a creek in Wiesbaden,
was built in the late 19th century
to enhance the town's spa quality?
7 September 2023
editMilka Stojanović,
prima donna at the National Theatre in Belgrade from 1960 to 1993,
performed the Verdian repertoire worldwide,
including Leonora, Amelia and Aida
at the Metropolitan Opera.
8 September 2023
editConcerts of the
Spannungen
festival of chamber music,
founded by pianist Lars Vogt
(8 September 1970 – 5 September 2022)
in 1998, are played in a power plant.
9 September 2023
editThe dramatic soprano
Ute Vinzing
(born 9 September 1936)
made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera as Elektra,
and appeared as Brünnhilde in Wagner's Ring cycle in Seattle.
10 September 2023
editDramatic soprano
Ursula Schröder-Feinen
appeared at the Bayreuth Festival
as Senta, Brünnhilde, Ortrud and,
with "intensity, ... freshness and spontaneity", as Kundry in Parsifal.
11 September 2023
editWalter Arlen
(July 31, 1920 – September 2, 2023),
who escaped the Nazi regime in Vienna
for the United States in 1939,
enjoyed the first recording of his compositions, for voice and piano, at age 92.
12 September 2023
editAnatol Ugorski
(28 September 1942 – 5 September 2023),
who had played piano music by controversial Western composers
such as Pierre Boulez in the Soviet Union,
made his first recording, of Beethoven's Diabelli Variations, in 1991?
13 September 2023
editThe pianist
Clara Schumann,
(13 September 1819 – 20 May 1896)
who toured Europe for decades,
taught 68 students at Dr. Hoch's,
including those from Britain and the U.S..
14 September 2023
editMargherita Rinaldi
(12 January 1935 – 7 September 2023)
made her debut as Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor in 1958,
prompting a career at La Scala in Milan where she appeared
as Giulietta in Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi
alongside Luciano Pavarotti.
15 September 2023
editSoprano Jessye Norman
(15 September 1945 – 30 September 2019),
whose voice was described
as a "grand mansion of sound",
performed at U.S. presidential inaugurations
and sang La Marseillaise
at the French Revolution's bicentennial.
16 September 2023
editWolfgang J. Fuchs
(16 September 1945 – 20 January 2020),
an early German comics scholar
who co-wrote a 1971 standard work on the topic,
translated Garfield
and Mom's Cancer.
17 September 2023
editThe tenor Graham Clark
appeared at the Bayreuth Festival in 16 seasons,
portraying the characters Loge and Mime
in the 1988 Ring cycle.
18 September 2023
editGrischa Huber
(18 September 1944 – 6 April 2021)
played Grischa in
Under the Pavement Lies the Strand,
regarded as
"a cult film in the feminist movement".
19 September 2023
editAfter the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
shared the Nobel Peace Prize, contributing author
Raymond Arritt
(September 19, 1957 – November 14, 2018)
said, "It's kind of neat:
I have, like, .002 percent of a Nobel prize now".
20 September 2023
editGeorg Christoph Biller (r.)
(20 September 1955 – 27 January 2022)
was the Thomaskantor,
the conductor of the Thomanerchor in Leipzig,
the 16th successor of Johann Sebastian Bach
in this position.
21 September 2023
edit"Freuet euch der schönen Erde",
an 1827 hymn
about the beauty of nature,
became successful with a melody
composed by Frieda Fronmüller
100 years later.
22 September 2023
editElisabeth Rethberg
(22 September 1894 – 6 June 1976)
a soprano
whose career began in Saxony,
became Aida
at La Scala in Milan,
conducted by Toscanini.
23 September 2023
editWith the growth of the
Werl pilgrimage
to a statue of Mary,
a large Romanesque Revival basilica
was built adjacent to
the former Baroque church.
24 September 2023
editFor the morning song
"Die güldne Sonne
voll Freud und Wonne",
the poet found a new metre,
and the composer a new melody,
to reflect the many meanings of "rising".
25 September 2023
editStephen Gould,
an American heldentenor,
performed around 100 times at the Bayreuth Festival,
especially as Tannhäuser, Siegfried, and Tristan,
all three even in one year in 2022.
26 September 2023
editA loop from the anthem
O clap your hands,
a setting of verses from Psalm 47
by Ralph Vaughan Williams
for choir, brass, organ and percussion,
was used by the Beatles for "Revolution 9".
27 September 2023
editKloster Gnadenthal
(buildings pictured)
was a Cistercian nunnery from 1235,
a Protestant women's Stift from 1564,
and became an ecumenical community
in 1969.
28 September 2023
editFrançois Glorieux
(27 August 1932 – 22 September 2023)
was a Belgian pianist and improvisor, touring with André Cluytens,
conductor of the BBC Radio Orchestra, the Stan Kenton band,
and four ensembles that he founded,
composer, and arranger for Michael Jackson.
29 September 2023
editThe Company of Heaven,
about angels, composed by Benjamin Britten
for speakers, soloists, choir and orchestra,
and first aired by the BBC on Michaelmas,
29 September 1937,
contains "metrical spoken (shouted) male chorus".
30 September 2023
editThe Kreuzkapelle
above Bad Camberg,
a pilgrimage chapel
dedicated to the Holy Cross,
has a floor plan of a Greek cross.
October
edit
1 October 2023
edit"Wir pflügen und wir streuen"
('We plow and sow'),
with words by Matthias Claudius,
began as a song of a fictional harvest festival,
and is now a Protestant hymn
for Erntedankfest.
2 October 2023
editDona nobis pacem
is a cantata by Ralph Vaughan Williams,
first performed on 2 October 1936,
a plea for peace with texts taken
from the Mass, poems by Walt Whitman,
a political speech, and sections of the Bible.
3 October 2023
editHaydn's oratorio
The Creation
is structured in three parts,
the first two about
the creation as narrated in Genesis,
and the third about
Adam and Eve in Paradise.
4 October 2023
editSwiss composer Hermann Suter's
symphonic oratorio
Le Laudi
(The Praises)
is a setting of St. Francis of Assisi's
Italian Canticle of the Sun
for choir, soloists, voci di ragazzi,
organ and orchestra.
5 October 2023
editTenor Daniel Behle
had a single day to learn rarely performed romantic duets
when he stepped in at short notice
for a 2018 Rheingau Musik Festival concert with Annette Dasch.
6 October 2023
editClaus Wisser
founded the services company Wisag,
and co-founded the Rheingau Musik Festival
which staged a concert of Orff's Carmina Burana for his 60th birthday.
7 October 2023
editRussell Sherman, a classical pianist
who taught at the New England Conservatory for more than half a century,
wrote about music by Franz Liszt:
"The poetic idea is central, and the virtuoso elements
become so many layers to orchestrate the poetic content".
8 October 2023
editTabea Zimmermann
(born 8 October 1966)
prepared her own version of Bartók's Viola Concerto
from the composer's sketches,
and played it at the Casals Forum,
with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony
conducted by Christoph Eschenbach.
9 October 2023
editAlain Altinoglu
(born 9 October 1975)
conducted the opening concert of the
2023 Rheingau Musik Festival
at Eberbach Abbey,
featuring Poulenc's Stabat Mater
with the MDR Rundfunkchor
and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony.
10 October 2023
editThe baritone Björn Bürger
(born 10 October 1985),
who won the
Bundeswettbewerb Gesang Berlin in 2012,
performed the title role
in Arnulf Herrmann's Der Mieter
in its 2017 world premiere
at the Oper Frankfurt.
11 October 2023
editJacqueline Dark,
a mezzo-soprano with Opera Australia for a while,
won awards for portraying Mozart's Donna Elvira and Strauss's Herodias,
and toured Australia and New Zealand
as Mother Abbess in The Sound of Music,
with "a stunning rendition of 'Climb Ev'ry Mountain'".
12 October 2023
editReiner Goldberg,
a heldentenor who performed Wagner-roles worldwide,
was a member of the Berlin State Opera from 1972,
appeared as Aron in the iconic production
of Schoenberg's Moses und Aron
of the Dresden State Opera in 1975,
and sang Parsifal in the 1982 Syberberg film
"with a youthful radiance
that is precisely that of the chaste madman".
13 October 2023
editMaurice Bourgue.
principal oboist with the Orchestre de Paris from its foundation in 1967,
and professor of chamber music at the Conservatoire de Paris,
played in world premieres such as Les Citations by Henri Dutilleux,
and Poulenc's Oboe Sonata with friends.
14 October 2023
editWhen Robert Hale
performed as Wagner's Wotan in Washington,
a reviewer noted that he commanded
"the spirit, from tragic grandeur to ironic detachment,
from flooding tenderness to grim rage".
15 October 2023
editJorge Lavelli
introduced the French audience to the Polish playwright Witold Gombrowicz,
directing his The Marriage in 1963 for a competition,
and his 1975 staging of Gounod's Faust for the Paris Opera,
set during World War I, was played until 2003.
16 October 2023
edit"Glauben können wie du"
(Believing like you),
a hymn by Helmut Schlegel,
is addressed to Mary,
and relates to her exemplary
faith, hope and love.
17 October 2023
editTenor Thomas Mohr,
who sang the roles
of Loge, Siegmund, and Siegfried
in Der Ring in Minden,
and Florestan in Fidelio in Hamm,
hosts concerts in his cowshed.
18 October 2023
editWalls and the ceiling of the
Unionskirche
(Union Church)
in Idstein are covered
with 38 oil paintings
from the Dutch Golden Age school
of Rubens.
19 October 2023
editTo include the popular Marian hymn
"Maria zu lieben, ist allzeit mein Sinn"
(To love Mary is always on my mind)
in the first common Catholic hymnal in German,
Friedrich Dörr retained only its first line.
In 2023,
a sculpture garden in Praunheim
displayed abstract works by
Hans Steinbrenner
from different periods of his life,
and corresponding works
by his friends and students.
21 October 2023
edit"Sozusagen grundlos vergnügt"
("Call it causelessly merry")
was one of about 40 poems
by Mascha Kaléko
set to music on a 2011 album.
"Ich freu mich, daß am Himmel Wolken ziehen"
22 October 2023
editThe opening chorus
of Bach's cantata
Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele, BWV 180,
has been regarded as
"perfectly tailored to the idea of the soul
dressing itself up in all its wedding finery".
23 October 2023
editHatto Beyerle,
the founding violist of the Alban Berg Quartet,
taught chamber music in Vienna, Hannover and Basel,
and initiated and directed the European Chamber Music Academy in 2004.
24 October 2023
editCarmen Petra Basacopol
a musicologist who taught
at the National University of Music Bucharest
between 1962 and 2003,
and at the Rabat Conservatoire,
composed operas for children
and chamber music for flute and harp.
25 October 2023
editElsa Reger
(25 October 1870 – 3 May 1951),
who had first rejected Max Reger's courting,
titled her autobiography
Mein Leben mit und für Max Reger
(My life with and for Max Reger).
26 October 2023
editPianist
Miku Nishimoto-Neubert,
a prize winner
of the Leipzig Bach Competition,
has been described as
"moving between capricious high spirits
and a meditative inwardness"
Alkan: Cello Sonata
27 October 2023
editMichael Schneider
conducted an oratorio by Alessandro Stradella,
performed by students and teachers of the Frankfurt University of Music
at Eberbach Abbey for the Rheingau Musik Festival.
28 October 2023
editIsabelle Cals,
who turned to singing after a degree in Chinese,
appeared as Wagner's Kundry
in a production of Parsifal
at the Stadttheater Minden
In Der Ring in Minden,
the orchestra played at the back of the stage,
and the singers all turned towards it
to listen to the music at the end.
29 October 2023
editPercy Grainger,
who left Australia at the age of 13
to attend Hoch's Conservatorium,
played a prominent role in the revival
of interest in British folk music
in the course of a long and innovative career.
30 October 2023
editIstván Láng,
an Hungarian composer,
teacher of chamber music at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music
and member of the bord of ISCM,
wrote theatrical music even in concert pieces.
31 October 2023
editJohn Eliot Gardiner performed
Bach's cantatas for Reformation Day
in the Schloßkirche, Wittenberg,
including
Gott der Herr ist Sonn und Schild, BWV 79.
November
edit
1 November 2023
editHerr, unser Herr, wie bist du zugegen,
a "song of God's presence"
written in 1965 in Dutch
by Huub Oosterhuis
(1 November 1933 – 9 April 2023),
became part of the first
common German Catholic hymnal,
and was retained in the second
by popular demand.
2 November 2023
editAfter signing the Camp David Accords in 1978,
Prime Minister Menachem Begin ended a speech
with a desire to sing the peace song
"Hevenu shalom aleichem"
with the people of Israel.
3 November 2023
editZdeněk Mácal,
a promising Czech conductor,
left his home country in 1968
and was chief conductor of orchestras
in Germany, Australia and the United States,
returning to Prague to lead
the Czech Philharmonic from 2003.
4 November 2023
editJesu, meine Freude
(Jesus, my joy),
a motet by Bach,
has a complex symmetrical structure
in which six hymn stanzas
alternate with five Bible verses.
The hymn
"Jesu, meine Freude"
by Johann Franck and Johann Crüger
mentions singing in defiance
of the "old dragon", death, and fear.
6 November 2023
editOn 6 November 2016
Peter Reulein conducted
the premiere of his oratorio
Laudato si',
described as a Franciscan Magnificat,
with more than 250 performers
at the Limburg Cathedral.
7 November 2023
editBach composed four dialogues
for his cantata
O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort, BWV 60,
first performed 7 November 1723,
three between Fear and Hope,
and one between Fear and the Voice of Christ.
Eric Sams remarked
"what bride ever had a finer wedding gift?"
of the song collection
Myrthen (Myrtles),
which Robert Schumann dedicated to Clara.
8 November 2023
editAstrid Schirmer
(born 8 November 1942)
appeared in roles by Richard Wagner,
both Venus and Elisabeth in his Tannhäuser,
and in the Bayreuth Jahrhundertring as both Ortlinde and Sieglinde.
9 November 2023
editIn the fairy-tale opera
Der Schuhu und die fliegende Prinzessin
by Udo Zimmermann,
two orchestras play on stage,
representing two empires in conflict.
10 November 2023
editThe first stanza of the hymn
"Nun bitten wir den Heiligen Geist",
asking the Holy Spirit
for the right faith most of all,
is documented in German
in the 13th century,
and the later three,
by Martin Luther
(10 November 1483 – 18 February 1546),
relate to faith, love and hope.
11 November 2023
edit11 November - St. Martin's Day
Two conductors
shared performances
of Verdi's Messa da Requiem
in St. Martin, Idstein.
Mozart: Lacrymosa
12 November 2023
editHarald Heckmann
(6 December 1924 – 5 November 2023),
a German musicologist focused on source documentation,
established the German Archive for the History of Music
and promoted international exchange in leading positions
of Répertoire International des Sources Musicales (RISM)
and many other organisations.
13 November 2023
edit"Mir nach, spricht Christus, unser Held"
(Follow me, says Christ, our hero)
is a Christian hymn in German
with a text by Angelus Silesius
that uses sayings of Jesus in direct speech.
14 November 2023
editIn 2016,
Edition Güntersberg
published
Twelve Fantasias for Viola da Gamba solo
by Georg Philipp Telemann
that had been lost.
Leonore von Zadow-Reichling and Günter von Zadow (r.)
received the first biennial Abel Prize of Köthen
for their efforts to retrieve and publish
compositions by Carl Friedrich Abel.
15 November 2023
editKurdish civil engineer and politician
Hevrin Khalaf
(15 November 1984 – 12 October 2019) ,
who worked for tolerance
among Christians, Arabs, and Kurds,
was killed in the
2019 Turkish offensive into Syria.
16 November 2023
editThe 1964 church
for the new parish
Zu den heiligen Engeln
(To the Holy Angels)
in Hannover
was designed by Josef Bieling
to symbolize the tent of God among men.
Nun bitten wir den Heiligen Geist
Nun danket all und bringet Ehr
17 November 2023
editSoprano
Rachel Yakar,
who received international attention in 1977
as Poppea with Nikolaus Harnoncourt,
was also described as an "ideal" Mélisande
and "a Mozartian at heart and in style".
18 November 2023
editAndris Nelsons
(born 18 November 1978)
conducted
Bartok's Viola Concerto
and Mahler's Fifth Symphony
in the final concert with his
Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie.
19 November 2023
editIn 2008
Naji Hakim composed
variations for oboe and organ
on Philipp Nicolai's chorale
"Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern",
published in 1599.
20 November 2023
editClaude Kahn
(9 November 1935 – 17 November 2023),
who won the Franz Liszt Competition at age 15,
founded and directed
a piano competition in his name in 1970,
and the conservatoire of Antibes in 1971.
21 November 2023
editTwo conductors
shared performances
of Verdi's Messa da Requiem
in St. Martin, Idstein.
Palmeri: Misatango
Reulein: Te Deum
look and listen to us
22 November 2023
editBenjamin Britten
(22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976),
composed
Canticle I: My beloved is mine and I am his
for the tenor voice of
Peter Pears,
using poetry from
A Divine Rapture by Francis Quarles.
23 November 2023
editThanksgiving
Lea Ackermann,
a German nun of the
Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Africa,
fought against
forced prostitution and sex tourism
in East Africa.
24 November 2023
editColette Maze,
the last pianist who studied with Alfred Cortot,
recorded music by Claude Debussy,
who was still alive when she was born in 1914,
in 2023.
25 November 2023
editBurgenland Croat sculptor
Thomas Resetarits
(25 November 1939 – 18 May 2022)
created Stations of the Cross.
26 November 2023
editDirector Frank Stähle revived
the choir and orchestra of Dr. Hoch's Konservatorium
and conducted them in
Mozart's Requiem
for the centenary of the Lutherkirche in Wiesbaden.
28 November 2023
editJerome Kohl
(November 27, 1946 – August 4, 2020),
a music theorist of the University of Washington,
was recognized internationally
as an authority on the composer
Karlheinz Stockhausen,
publishing a book on his Zeitmaße in 2017.
29 November 2023
editFrançois Glorieux
was a Belgian pianist and improvisor,
conductor of the BBC Radio Orchestra and Stan Kenton's band,
and arranger for Michael Jackson.
30 November 2023
editContralto
Sonia Prina
(born 30 November 1975)
performed the title role
of Antonio Vivaldi's 1727 opera Orlando furioso
at the Oper Frankfurt,
staged as a rocker.
December
edit
1 December 2023
editAmerican lyric tenor
Douglas Ahlstedt,
who appeared as a child as Miles
in the U.S. premiere of Britten's The Turn of the Screw,
performed at the Met 191 times,
before and after he was a member
of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein.
2 December 2023
editBernard Ładysz,
a bass-baritone who performed in world premieres
of Krzysztof Penderecki's music
in Hamburg and in Salzburg,
was the only Polish singer to appear with
Maria Callas
(2 December 1923 – 16 September 1977).
Andréa Guiot appeared internationally
in French soprano roles
such as Mireille, Marguerite, Manon,
and Micaëla in Bizet's Carmen,
which she recorded alongside
Maria Callas
in the title role.
3 December 2023
editThe Advent song
"Macht hoch die Tür"
(Fling wide the door),
with text by Georg Weissel written for the inauguration of the church
where he would be ordained pastor a week later,
is number 1 in the German Protestant hymnal.
4 December 2023
editConductor Dessauer and composer Mawby (r.), 2012 |
Gabriel Dessauer
(born 4 December 1955)
conducted the premiere of Reger's Hebbel Requiem
in the organ version of Max Beckschäfer
with a project choir at the Marktkirche in Wiesbaden.
The prolific composer and Westminster Cathedral conductor
Colin Mawby
said, "I cannot write choral music unless I work with choirs ...
I have to write for particular people".
5 December 2023
editChristof Loy
(born 5 December 1962)
received the 2008 Der Faust award as best opera director
for staging Mozart's Così fan tutte at the Oper Frankfurt.
6 December 2023
editWilhelm II,
German Emperor,
called the
Kurhaus in Wiesbaden
"the most beautiful spa in the world"
at the opening ceremony.
7 December 2023
editIgnace Michiels
(born 7 December 1963)
of the St. Salvator's Cathedral in Bruges
has been the organist
for the German-Flemish Reger-Chor
in works such as Reger's Requiem.
Reger: Der 100. Psalm
8 December 2023
editMax Reger
composed "in new simplicity"
Unser lieben Frauen Traum,
a motet suitable for Advent,
about a dream of Mary
of a tree growing in her.
9 December 2023
editMedea Amiranashvili,
a Georgian operatic soprano and academic teacher,
portrayed characters such as Revaz Lagidze's Lela,
Verdi's Leonora in Il trovatore and Puccini's Madama Butterfly,
with "fierce inner expression".
10 December 2023
editIn 1973
Luten Petrowsky
(10 December 1933 – 10 July 2023)
played the saxophone in a quartet
that made the first record
with jazz musicians
from both East and West Germany.
11 December 2023
editThe lawyer
Wolfgang Wieland,
a co-founder of the Berlin Greens
and their speaker in the city parliament,
represented the joint plaintiff
in the Mykonos restaurant assassinations.
12 December 2023
editThe Advent hymn
"O Heiland, reiß die Himmel auf"
(O Saviour, tear open the heavens)
was written against a backdrop
of the Thirty Years' War, the plague,
and witch trials.
13 December 2023
editRabbi
Michael Robinson
(December 13, 1924 – July 20, 2006)
and 15 other Reform rabbis
were arrested and jailed after answering Martin Luther King's
call to stand with him for civil rights in St. Augustine, Florida.
14 December 2023
editWolfgang Rennert
conducted the world premieres
of Louise Talma's Die Alkestiade at the Oper Frankfurt
and Rainer Kunad's Sabellicus at the Staatsoper Berlin.
15 December 2023
editErna Berger sang the title role
of Smetana's The Bartered Bride
in a 1955 recording with
Wilhelm Schüchter
(15 December 1911 – 27 May 1974)
and the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie.
16 December 2023
editPrince Nikolaus Esterházy,
who commissioned
Beethoven's Mass in C major
for his wife's name day,
found it "unbearably ridiculous and detestable".
17 December 2023
editIn 2018
Lydia Steier,
born in Hartford, Connecticut,
became the first woman
to stage Mozart's Die Zauberflöte
at the Salzburg Festival.
18 December 2023
editMartin Luther's hymn
"Mit Fried und Freud ich fahr dahin",
a reflection of the canticle of Simeon,
is the base of funeral music
by Schütz, Buxtehude and Bach.
19 December 2023
edit"Mit Ernst, o Menschenkinder",
a 1642 Advent hymn,
includes a call to penitence
that John the Baptist took
from the prophet Isaiah.
20 December 2023
editThe German Advent song
"Tochter Zion, freue dich"
has words by Friedrich Heinrich Ranke
set to music used
for triumphant entrances
in two of Handel's oratorios.
21 December 2023
editSoprano
Nadine Secunde
(born 21 December 1953)
was praised for "formidable acting skills"
in the title role of Dmitri Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.
22 December 2023
editDer neue
Catalogue of Works of Carl Friedrich Abel
wurde 2023 in Köthen vorgestellt,
wo der Gambist
vor 300 Jahren geboren wurde.
The new
Catalogue of Works of Carl Friedrich Abel
(AbelWV)
was introduced in Köthen,
where the viol virtuoso was born
on 22 December 1723.
23 December 2023
editGunther Emmerlich,
bass singer and television presenter,
appeared as Kuno
in the performance of Weber's Der Freischütz
to open the restored Semperoper.
24 December 2023
editOn Christmas Eve in 1818,
the Christmas carol
"Stille Nacht"
("Silent Night")
was first performed in the
Nikolauskirche
in Oberndorf, Austria.
25 December 2023
edit"Verbum caro factum est",
a Christmas motet for six voices
by Hans Leo Hassler
in the Venetian polychoral style,
has been arranged
for brass ensembles.
26 December 2023
editBach's cantata for the second day of Christmas,
Darzu ist erschienen der Sohn Gottes
("For this the Son of God appeared"),
BWV 40,
is his first Christmas cantata
composed for Leipzig.
27 December 2023
editBach has
a choir of trombones double
the choir in his cantata
Sehet, welch eine Liebe hat uns der Vater erzeiget, BWV 64,
for the Third Day of Christmas,
dedicated to John the Evangelist
and first performed on 27 December 1723.
28 December 2023
editDiethard Hellmann
(28 December 1928 – 14 October 1999),
the director of church music at the Christuskirche in Mainz,
reconstructed the music
of the lost Bach cantata for the Third Sunday in Advent,
Ärgre dich, o Seele, nicht, BWV 186a.
29 December 2023
editRebekka Habermas,
a German historian
at the University of Göttingen,
who also taught
in Paris, Montreal and New York,
focused on people
in the social and cultural conditions
of 19th-century Germany.
30 December 2023
editHeike Matthiesen
recorded a 2016 album
Guitar Ladies
of compositions for guitar solo by women
including Sidney Pratten (1821–1895),
María Luisa Anido, Ida Presti,
Sofia Gubaidulina, Sylvie Bodorová,
Annette Kruisbrink, and Maria Linnemann
who had dedicated her work to the player.
31 December 2023
editA German theologian wrote
"Vertraut den neuen Wegen"
(Trust the new ways)
to the melody of
Lob Gott getrost mit Singen
(Praise God confidently with singing)
to be sung at a wedding in Eisenach
shortly before the fall of the Wall.