St Thomas’s Boys Choir |and the University Church of St Paul

With this disc, St Thomas’s Boys Choir remembers Leipzig’s University Church of St Paul, which was destroyed in 1968. Built in the thirteenth century, the church survived the battle of the Völkerschlacht as well as the First and Second World Wars unscathed. In 1968, however, the Politbüro of the socialist party, the Leipzig city council, and the University’s senate decided to demolish the church and to redesign the town’s Augustusplatz to match socialist ideals. A church was no longer adequate for the campus of what was then the Karl-Marx University. This CD was released on the anniversary of the church’s demolition on 30 May. St Thomas’s Boys Choir commemorates the great historical and cultural value of the University Church of St Paul together with the Gewandhaus Orchestra and a number of soloists. Compositions from Johann Sebastian Bach and Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy to Dmitri Terzakis shed light onto the century-long joint history and musical connections between the University and St Thomas’s Boys Choir.