Comments on On An Overgrown Path: Dresden Requiem for eleven young victims

I'am Iñigo from Spain and this is my Requiems Coll...

2008-03-09T14:56:00.000Z

I'am Iñigo from Spain and this is my Requiems Collection
If You Need Some.
http://requiemsmios.blogspot.com/

Emily, good luck with your work at the school in N...

2006-02-14T08:33:00.000Z

Emily, good luck with your work at the school in New York which you chronicle so well in your blog.

I was moved to write this article because of the tragic loss of young lives in Dresden. The future of some of today's young people is in your hands, and that is very important.

Thank you for this post. I am so excited to read ...

2006-02-14T02:11:00.000Z

Thank you for this post. I am so excited to read it more carefully...

right now school is eating me alive. But I promise, I will get to it.

Pressure of space forced a tight editorial focus o...

2006-02-13T19:29:00.000Z

Pressure of space forced a tight editorial focus on Rudolph Mauersberger in the above article. This meant I was unable to mention some of the other musical activities of the Kreuzchor.

The music of Heinrich Schutz, once Director of Music in Dresden at the Court of the Prince Elector of Saxony, has held a special place in their programmes for decades, as of course has Johann Sebastian Bach. Also in their repertoire are motets by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Johannes Brahms, Anton Bruckner and Max Reger.

From the 20th century there are vocal works by Guenter Raphael, Hugo Distler, Francis Poulenc, Benjamin Britten, and Krzysztof Penderecki.

Concerts are performed with the Dresdner Philharmonic and the Saechsische Staatskapelle Dresden (Saxon State Orchestra) including Bach's Weihnachtsoratorium (Christmas Oratorio), and his passions, masses, and cantatas' and Ein deutsches Requiem by Johannes Brahms are given annual performances in the Kreuzkirche.

For a number of years the Dresdner Kreuzchor has also worked together with specialist early music ensembles.

I should have said in the comment above that the 1...

2006-02-13T18:11:00.000Z

I should have said in the comment above that the 1982 premiere of Henze's 7th Symphony commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic was conducted by Gianluigi Gelmetti and lasted for 46 minutes. When Henze himself conducted it the duration was 36 minutes, and Rattle takes 38 minutes.

It was brave of the Berlin Philharmonic to make these centenary commissions. In 1982 an increasingly cantankerous Herbert von Karajan was still at the helm. Not the best of times for new music.

Thanks Garth. Probably the highest profile Berlin ...

2006-02-13T17:51:00.000Z

Thanks Garth. Probably the highest profile Berlin Philharmonic Centenary commission was Hans Werner Henze's 7th Symphony. The very fine recording by Simon Rattle and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra plays as I write.

Pliable, thank you for these two very moving and t...

2006-02-13T17:17:00.000Z

Pliable, thank you for these two very moving and thoughtful posts.

Last night, upon my return to Washington, I privately commemorated the Dresden bombing by listening to the recording of Dresden-born composer/conductor Udo Zimmerman's 1982 oratorio, fairly recently released, entitled Pax Questuosa (The Lamenting Peace), which sets Saint Francis of Assisi, Czeslaw Milosc, Nelly Sachs, and five other German language poets. The col legno recording, made in 1983 or 1984, features Edith Wiens, Mechtild Gessendorf, William Cochran, Roland Hermann, Siegmund Nimsgern, and the Bavarian Radio Chorus and Symphony Orchestra under Udo Zimmermann. The work was commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic in commemoration of the orchestra's one hundred anniversary, in 1982 (the year that Ronald Reagan pushed NATO and West Germany to accept more nuclear- tipped tactical weapons on it soil west of Dresden and near the Fulda gap.) The final exhortation of the Zimmerman oratorio prefigures the J.S. Bach tricentennial celebrations of 1985.

Professor Zimmerman's anti-Nazi Weisse Rose (White Rose) chamber opera, with Gabriele Fontana and Lutz Harder, should also still be available on the Orfeo label. Zimmerman has been a leading figure in contemporary humanist music and experimental music theater in Dresden, Leipzig, and Berlin since at least 1970.

Perhaps you could research, or mention if you readily recall, what other works were commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic, in 1982, for the centennial. Thank you.