REFLEXIONS - 1700 years of Jewish life in Germany

On Saturday 4 June at 7.30 pm, Markus Kaufmann will perform Edvard Grieg's piano concerto at the 31st Days of Jewish Culture in Chemnitz. The REFLEXIONEN concert in the Lutherkirche Chemnitz, Zschopauer Straße 151, will focus on the influence of Jewish culture on European music.

The Dresden String Soloists, Markus Kaufmann (piano) and Uta Grohmann (clarinet) will perform Grieg's piano concerto "Kol Nidrei" by Max Bruch (soloist Tobias Bäz) as well as exquisite chamber music works by Sergei Prokofiev (Overture on Hebrew Themes) and Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy's famous Octet for Strings.

Admission costs 15 euros, concessions 10 euros.
The concert is a co-operation between the Municipal Music School and the Luther Church Community, the Days of Jewish Culture, the German-Israeli Society and the Evangelical Forum.

Emperor Constantine's edict of 11 December 321 for the city of Cologne proves that Jews and their culture had a firm place in the public life of European countries. Particularly in music, there are very fruitful mutual influences, but also repeated anti-Semitic tendencies.

The concert will feature works by Prokofiev and Bruch, which were written under the influence of Jewish music, as well as the Octet by Mendelssohn Bartholdy, whose compositions were banned from performance in Germany from 1933 onwards because of his Jewish origins, even though his family had converted to Christianity.

Grieg experienced the strong anti-Semitic tendencies that flared up in France with the Dreyfus Affair when he took a public stance. Only his "Peasant Dances op. 72" were able to reconcile the French population.

The ensemble Zimro (Hebrew: "song") was founded in Petrograd (now St Petersburg) in 1918 to publicise works of the New Jewish School. The musicians, consisting of a string quartet, clarinet and piano, were fellow students of Sergei Prokofiev at the conservatory. When they met the composer during a guest performance in the USA, they asked him to write an overture for their ensemble. The musicians gave him a songbook of Jewish melodies as inspiration. Prokofiev composed the overture within a few days.

Max Bruch, famous in his time as a composer and conductor, is best known today for his 1st Violin Concerto. He was very interested in the songs of other peoples. Among other things, he arranged the Hebrew "Kol Nidrei" for violoncello and orchestra, which was premiered on 20 October 1881 at the Gewandhaus Leipzig.

Alongside the music for "Peer Gynt", Edward Grieg's piano concerto became his most famous work. After its premiere in Copenhagen by Edmund Neupert in 1870, it quickly spread throughout European musical life. Only the composer was not satisfied with his piece, revising the instrumentation in particular several times.

At the age of 16, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy composed the Octet op. 20, an extremely virtuoso work for strings which shows that he had already found his personal tonal language a year before composing the overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream. He gave the composition, which was completed on 15 October 1825, to his violin teacher Eduard Ritz for his 23rd birthday.

The musicians involved

As a church musician and director of the Quedlinburg Music Summer, Markus Kaufmann enjoys sharing and passing on his passion for music. Together with his brother Pascal, he discovered the world of the piano at an early age. They still dedicate a three-day piano festival, Tastenfeuerwerk, to their home town of Lichtenstein, which they developed with their early patron Markus Ludwig. They perform their "Duel on Two Wings" in packed halls and churches nationwide.

Markus Kaufmann studied at the Carl Maria von Weber Academy of Music in Dresden and at the Academy of Church Music. His piano playing has been honoured with first prizes at the international piano competition "Piano ohne Grenzen" as well as special and national awards at Jugend musiziert. Concert invitations have taken him to the Bayreuth Steingraeber Festival, the Saxon Mozart Festival, the Mendelssohn House in Leipzig and the König-Albert-Theater Bad Elster. As a soloist, he has already performed Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Piano Concerto in C minor, Franz Liszt's Dance of Death and piano concertos by Johann Sebastian Bach and Edvard Grieg. Markus Kaufmann was recently appointed church musician at Leipzig's St Nicholas Church. From December, he will work there as Nikolaikantor on the largest organ in Saxony and organise the music at the historic site of the Peaceful Revolution.

Cellist Tobias Bäz studied at the music academies in Dresden and Leipzig. After graduating, he began a masterclass course there and moved to Berlin in 2012 to perfect his training at the Hanns Eisler School of Music in the master's programme of Prof. Troels Svane. He has won prizes at numerous competitions, including first prize at the international Dotzauer Competition in Dresden, the international Johannes Brahms Competition in Austria and the chamber music competition at the Academy of Music and Theatre in Leipzig. He has received scholarships from the Villa Musica Rheinland-Pfalz, the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben and the "Ad infinitum foundation". He was also included in the International Forum for Culture and Economy's register of highly gifted talents. He has gained experience with renowned orchestras, including the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra, as 1st solo cellist with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, the Lower Saxony State Orchestra, the Vienna Tonkünstler Orchestra, the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra and the SWR Symphony Orchestra. From 2015 to 2017, he was deputy 1st solo cellist with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig. He has also performed many times as a soloist with orchestras such as the MDR Symphony Orchestra Leipzig, the Philharmonie Merck Darmstadt, the Baden-Baden Philharmonic Orchestra and the Mendelssohn Chamber Orchestra Leipzig. Tobias Bäz plays a rare violoncello by Guiseppe Dall'Aglio (Mantua around 1810).

The clarinettist Uta Kremtz works as a music teacher and musician, plays in chamber ensembles and performs as a soloist. She has also played in Gößweinstein and Franconian Switzerland for many years.

The Dresden String Soloists came together in autumn 2020 for a concert at the "Quedlinburg Music Summer" because it was not possible to accompany Edvard Grieg's piano concerto with an orchestra due to the current hygiene regulations. The ensemble consists of freelance musicians from the Staatskapelle Dresden and the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra, who also perform together in other chamber music ensembles.

Violins

Lenka Matějáková, freelance violinist in Dresden

Chamber virtuoso Jörg Faßmann, deputy 1st concertmaster of the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden

Paige Kearl, 2nd violinist of the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra

Andreas Grohmann, freelance violinist and conductor

Violas

Matan Gilitchensky, deputy principal viola of the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra

Eva Maria Knauer, freelance violist in Dresden

Violoncellos

Tobias Bäz, freelance cellist in Dresden

Sofia von Freydorf, member of the Giuseppe Sinopoli Academy of the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden

Double bass

Torsten Hoppe, principal double bass of the Staatskapelle Dresden