Leipzig JSB & the Best Wurst

Köln station is almost in the cathedral so I can eat my morning sausage whilst taking my last gaze at that huge building. I have managed to get a 25% reduction on the Leipzig fare by showing my Italian ‘Carta D’Argento’ to the nice lady selling tickets so I am more happy than usual.

The clever traveller always tries to find the quickest and most comfortable way to the destination. Wrong!!!! Trains can sometimes run late in Europe. It’s not because they’re slow. It’s because the train you catch has probably originated from a city far away and, because of this, has had plenty of opportunities to experience delays for all sorts of reasons. Once it is delayed, as happened on my journey from Florence to Rome, it finds difficulty in finding a ‘slot’ in the platform allocation so it is delayed even more. So the clever traveller is better off getting a train which goes directly to the destination, however slowly, than choosing a faster more comfortable route involving a change of train. At least the traveller is sure that the train will eventually arrive at the destination within a reasonable time.

In my stupidity, I have chosen a route riding only nice ICE trains involving a change at Frankfurt airport station. But, just a hundred kilometres short of the airport, the train comes to a halt at a small station and we are told that we are to remain there for two or three hours.

Panic! The train is full of people on their way to catch intercontinental flights which they cannot afford to miss. Consternation! The really desperate travellers call for taxis and eventually depart to catch their flights an hour later. As soon as the taxis have gone, the train moves off at a tremendous lick, knowing that the line is clear all the way to Frankfurt. I take a look at the speedo and notice that we are doing well over three hundred kilometres an hour. I didn’t even know these trains could go that fast!

I had been told that I would have to wait about three hours for the next train but we go so fast that I manage to catch an earlier Leipzig ICE train. So I am a happy camper; unlike those people still to arrive in their taxis.

As soon as I have found my hotel, I hasten to the Nicolaikirche where they are beginning a dialogue concerned with ‘Peace’. The Nicolaikirche is where the ‘Friedliche Revolution’ began. People were tired of the restrictive mechisms of the DDR and simply wanted a more free way of life. Some did not want unification with West Germany but they definitely wanted a way out of a regime which was basically controlling, personally invasive, corrupt and dishonest.

The church started the ‘Prayers for Peace’ on the fifth of May 1989 and the reaction of the police was to block all driveways and later even motorway exits while the Monday prayer meeting was being held.

Then the police applied pressure on the church to cancel the Monday meetings. After this they started hauling people off for ‘temporary detention’ or arrest on account of the peace prayers. But the number of people attending the meetings increased until it exceeded the 2,000 seat capacity of the church.

On the 7th of October, the 40th anniversary of the DDR, there were extensive peaceful demonstrations at which hundreds were taken away and locked up in stables in Markkleeberg. The administration also made it clear through the press that it intended to put an end to the “counter-revolution, if necessary by armed force”

On the 9th of October, one thousand party members (SED) were ordered to join the Stasi (the not-so-secret police who had been attending the peace prayers for some time) in the church. The sermon was, as usual, based on the Beatitudes. Also phrases like “Love your enemies”, “Many who now are first will be last”, “You are the salt …” struck a chord with the assembled people apparently.

Then appeals for non-viiolence were read out, including one from Kurt Masur, Chief Conductor of the Gewandhaus orchestra. People leaving the church were greeted by thousands more outside. They carried candles and persuaded the military groups, who had been given orders to fire on any demonstrations, to permit their peaceful approaches, much to the relief of all the participants. Over fifty thousand people marched around Leipzig with candles that day. Four weeks later the border was opened and the Berlin wall came down.

Horst Sindermann, a member of the DDR Central Committee said before he died, “We had planned everything. We were prepared for everything. But NOT for candles and prayers.” It brings to mind Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s two things – “Prayer and Just Behaviour”.

Being in the Nicolaikirche for the Monday prayers, even though I understood not a word, is therefore a particpation in the memory of a historic event almost twenty years after it happened. But they do sing two anthems and two spirituals besides the dialogue on peace. All the words spoken this week will be about peace.

Then the organ spoke! The acoustics are excellent in the Nicolaikirche so they do not distort loud sounds as in other buildings. It frightened me to hear such a pure broad sound.

Leipzig has a very nice town centre. A surprisingly large number of old buildings remain or have been restored. Not all the new buildings are architectural masterpieces but some of them are remarkable. The overall effect is very pleasant, so much so that people enjoy walking around the area.

Funnily enough, one of the most remarkable features I like are the three levels of the main station! The top level is the railway station itself. The level below is an enormous food court. The bottom level is a series of excellent shops. You can do all your shopping here. They even have an Aldi. There are dozens of butchers/cafes where you can buy every sort of sausage known to man or woman. The smell as you walk along is incredible! Whoever thought of a shopping centre in such a convenient position is a genius! Outside the station/shops are four parallel lines of trams all going the same way but diverging to different suburbs.

One of my objects in coming to Leipzig is to hear the historic Gewandhaus Orhestra. But this week they are playing for the opera and ballet. I therefore buy tickets for both.

There are plenty of artistic connections in Leipzig. Opposite the Nikolaikirche is the Alte Nikolaisschule where Wagner and Leibnitz, inventor of the differential and integral calculus independently of Newton, both studied. (Both of them were born in Leipzig). Goethe spent time drinking here whilst failing his law exams, later passed elsewhere.

But it is Mendelssohn whom we think of as the nineteenth century musical hero of Leipzig. I walk around his house and view the rooms in which he worked. He was probably the world’s first modern conductor who had complete control over his orchestra. Leipzig still has the Mendelssohn Festival every year. To these rooms came the Europe’s best contemporary composers including Wagner and Schumann. Schumann and Mendelssohn had a common love of the music of Bach and, of course, it was Mendelssohn who was the first contemporary performer of the long forgotten Bach’s music. He also founded Germany’s oldest Music Conservatory. The Nazis banned his music but he is definitely back today as a hero of Leipzig and the man who made the Gewandhaus orchestra great.

Interestingly Anne-Sophie Mutter says that the Leipzig musicians “not only play together; they also feel together and breathe together.” so their reputation lives on.

If I am to hear the Gewandhaus Orchestra this week, I must first hear them in the pit for a Luigi Nono opera, ‘Unter der Grossen Sonne von Liebe Beladen’ – ‘Al gran sole carico d’amore’ in Italian or ‘In the Bright Sunshine Heavy with Love’ in English. The opera or rather the ‘azione scenica’ is stolen from plays by Bertolt Brecht, but also has bits of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Karl Marx, and Lenin.

The production is quite spectacular, opening with a group of coffins stretching into the far distance (reminded me a little of the Jewish cemetery above the Kidron valley) from which emerges the cast. The music is atonal and incorporates electroacoustic sound which was still most effective when it was written in 1975. It centres round women who died whilst attempting to stop the violence of their times. Much of the action takes place during the Paris Commune and the Russian Revolution. I went to see this opera certain that I was going to hate it. In fact I enjoyed both the music and the production; rare these days!

The following evening is one I have looked forward to all week. I’m in the Thomaskirche for ‘Motette’, as they call a service largely consisting of music. Just my type of service!!! To my astonishment, the organist begins by playing Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor on the romantic period organ at the back of the church. (Never did understand that one!!) There are three organs in the church if you count the continuo organ besides the baroque organ normally used for Bach. During the last seven months, I have heard this piece played dozens of times so I suppose I have brought it back to its home.

This is Bach’s church even though he worked for the Nikolaikirche also. His body lies in the chancel and the choir has sung continually here since he died. This is the centre of the world for Bach lovers.

The choir sings a substantial ‘Te Deum’ by Mendelssohn with continuo. Later they follow this with another section from the Te Deum ‘Salvum fac populum tuum’. Even more Mendelssohn Te Deum follows later with his ‘Dignare, Domine’. (There’s a little notice in the service pamphlet asking people not to clap after they have finished singing that lot!!!) I like the fact that they have a nice continuo band which makes a piece like this sound great. The choir has a very broad tone unlike any I have heard. It could be because of the acoustic in which they sing. English cathedrals and chapels do tend to influence the way in which choirs sing and perhaps prep’ school vowels also have something to do with it? There are eighteen men singers and they sing plainsong excellently.

I emerge from the Thomaskirche feeling very happy but really needing a gluhwein from the stall in the square. But the line is so long that I abandon the idea and go to the square bordered by the Gewandhaus and the Opera where people are assembling to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the Friedliche Revolution.

Everybody seems happy in the square and Kurt Masur emerges from the Gewandhaus, hailed as a hero by the surrounding crowd. But elsewhere there is a procession of older people who lived through the whole life of the DDR. Thousands of these people walk together around the city holding their candles and remembering those years. In contrast to the younger people in the square, they look VERY serious.

All the streets of Leipzig have been closed to traffic. They even close the ring road around the city!! It reminds me again of the checkpoints on the Palestine West bank. Huge concrete blocks have been moved across the road and, in other places, anything heavy has been placed as a barrier. There are police everywhere and I wonder whether there is more going on here than I realise.

The following day at 1500 hr, I am at ‘Motette’ again. This time there is a more varied programme of music. Just to give an idea of how much they sing, I list below some of the music sung at this session …

Giovanni Croce (1557-1609)

Voce Mea (a capella)

 

Giuseppe Ottavio Pitoni (1657-1743)

Cantate Domino (a capella)

 

Joseph Gabriel Rheinberger (1839-1901)

Dextera Domini (choir and orgen)

 

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809-1847)   Gerwandhauskapellmeister 1835-1847

Der hundertste Psalm (a capella)

 

Giovanni Croce (1557-1609)

Cantate Domino (men’s voices)

 

Maurice Durufle (1902-1986)

Ubi Caritas (a capella)

 

Vytautas Miskinis (1954- )

Pecacantem Me (men’s voices)

 

Willem Andriessen (1887-1964)

Exsultate Deo (choir and organ)

 

Andrew Carter (1938- )

Joy is Come (choir and organ)

 

Dieterich Buxtehude (1637-1707)

Befiehl dem Engel, dass er komm

(Chor, zwei violinen, violone, und Basso continuo)

Dieterich Buxtehude (1637-1707)

Alles, was ihr tut mit Worten oder mit Werken

Kantate fur Sopran, Bass, Chor, funf Streichinstrumente und Basso continuo.

 

The last piece by Buxtehude, consisting of five movements, was charming. It’s an early work and with what sounded to me like a very Italian influence. ‘Joy is Come’ by Andrew Carter was a surprise and I think they left Kings way behind. But of course, it could be the helpful acoustic? I like the fact that they still sing the old non-metric hymns and they put musical notation in the service sheets often in plainsong form.

In the evening I am again in the Thomaskirche listening to a performance of Bach’s ‘Mass in B minor’ in the church where it was performed. The orchestra and choir perform from the musicians’ gallery so I am hearing the sound of this performance coming at me from behind. The performance is similar to most standard performances on CD with exuberant trumpet playing and fine singing.

Next day I hie to the opera house again for a performance of ‘Giselle’. I love ‘Giselle’ because the heroine dies in the first act. The second act is weird and I like weird! But we all know the only reason the Wilis don’t kill Albrecht is because he is a better dancer than Hilarion. But, when all is said and done, it’s all an excuse for some fabulous dancing! I love it!! In a ballet like this, you get to hear more great brass playing, especially the tuba(!!) than in a year sitting in a concert hall. The Gewandhaus has a great pit band and their playing is brilliant.

The interior of the opera house looks really boring until you sit in a cheap seat (like mine) on the side wall at the front (third row) and realize that you have sight lines to almost the whole stage! The rotten old DDR did a good job here. They put music and function before architectural tradition! The sound is great and you can see from every seat in the house. In Munich, they rebuilt the opera house as it used to be with the result that a quarter of the seats have a very poor view of the stage. Even the recent rebuild of La Fenice is an exact reproduction of the old opera house.

I regret not having stayed longer in Leipzig. It’s a great city and only music nuts like me would think of visiting. Things are cheaper and their sausages are arguably (and I’m arguing their case!) better than anywhere else in Germany. In fact my favourite spiced Leipzig sausage costs just one euro complete with mountains of mustard or ketchup plus a freshly baked roll. Yunny!! And the smells in the streets are wonderful!!