Bach Orchestra in Leipzig

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The Leipzig Bach Orchestra (sometimes also the Leipzig Bach Orchestra , formerly the Leipzig Gewandhaus Bach Orchestra ) is a chamber orchestra made up of musicians from the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra , which particularly interprets music by Johann Sebastian Bach and other masters of the baroque and pre-classical periods . Its leader is Christian Funke .

history

Gewandhauskapellmeister Franz Konwitschny performed Bach's six Brandenburg concerts with a small cast of the Gewandhaus Orchestra at the Leipzig Bach Festival in 1962 with great success. Since it was Konwitschny's last conducting in Leipzig before his death, the concertmaster of the Gewandhaus Orchestra Gerhard Bosse derived the continuation from it as a legacy of Konwitschny and established the small line-up in 1963 as the "Bach Orchestra of the Gewandhaus in Leipzig" during the time without chief conductor. This orchestra subsequently undertook several concert tours to western countries, including as one of the first GDR ensembles in the FRG after the Wall was built in 1961, which aroused the displeasure of the other orchestra members of the Gewandhaus .

Gerhard Bosse and the Gewandhaus director Karl Zumpe appeased this with alleged, but in reality nonexistent, state resolutions. The international successes of the Bach orchestra and the somewhat compensatory regulation that members of the Bach orchestra are less taken into account when the Gewandhausorchester travels abroad, ensured a bit of calm.

When interest from abroad waned in the 1970s, among other things because of numerous new Bach orchestras, a tradition of annual performance of the six Brandenburg concerts in winter in the West Berlin Philharmonic was established from 1974 .

In 1987 Gerhard Bosse retired. In 1979 Kurt Masur brought Christian Funke from the Dresden Staatskapelle to Leipzig with the promise of being able to take over the Bach orchestra after Bosse. Although Masur toyed with the idea of ​​dissolving the somewhat outdated Bach orchestra in favor of other younger chamber music ensembles, Funke insisted on the promise. Masur complied with this in such a way that he completely separated the Bach orchestra from the Gewandhaus orchestra, that is, making music for the Gewandhaus members in the Bach orchestra was now regarded as a sideline or leisure activity.

The newly formed Bach Orchestra performed for the first time on January 16, 1988 in the Gewandhaus and immediately began to travel successfully. When, after the fall of the Wall in 1990, the GDR's central art agency ceased its work, Christian Funke was well prepared for this situation by moving away from the Gewandhaus. In order to resolve the last conflict with the Gewandhausorchester, the name "Bachorchester des Gewandhauses zu Leipzig", which was left after it was removed from the Gewandhaus, was shortened to "Bachorchester zu Leipzig" in 2014.

literature

  • The Two Lives of the Gewandhaus Bach Orchestra . In: Gewandhausmagazin, No. 84, autumn 2014

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