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Take the Direct Musical Route to Stenzlershof!
Leipzig! The name of this city is, of course, associated predominantly with one great name: Johann Sebastian Bach, cantor at St Thomas’s Church between 1723 and 1750, successor of Johann Michael Schein and Johann Kuhnau, and predecessor of Günther Ramin, Erhard Mauersberger, and of today’s artistic director of St Thomas’s Boys Choir, Georg Christoph Biller.
Not only Bach worked in Leipzig, though – the Saxonian metropolis, renowned for its trade fairs, was home also to other great composers: Richard Wagner was born here on 22 May 1813, as was Robert Schumann’s wife Clara, on 13 September 1819; Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy died in Leipzig on 4 November 1847, and Max Reger breathed his last here on 11 May 1916.
The Stenzlershof
In addition to Bach, Leipzig is also associated with names such as Gustav Mahler, Georg Philipp Telemann, Albert Lortzing, Edvard Grieg, or Leoš Janáček. All these composers spent time working in Leipzig, and a walking route of over five miles reminds visitors of their presence: a route of curved steel inlays runs across the centre of Leipzig at pavement level – and also passes the Petersstraße, where Rondeau Production has its offices in the so-called Stenzlershof.
From here, the route runs past the Bach-museum and the place where the house in which Clara Schumann was born once stood, on to the former homes of the old conservatoire and the first Gewandhaus; it leads visitors past the University Church of St Paul (Telemann was a notable student of the school attached to this church, the Paulinum), past the new Gewandhaus, the Mendelssohn-house, the Grieg-centre, and the former Peters music library; the museum of music instruments invites passers-by to a brief visit; next the route runs past the Schumanns’ old home and the Wagner monument, the old opera house, the old school attached to the church of St Nikolai, and finally to St Nikolai itself. On the way, visitors pass the ‘Hôtel de Saxe’, where Mozart’s widow Constanze stayed in 1796 (carrying with her the score of the Requiem, which was to be performed in Leipzig that year); in 1835, Frederic Chopin stayed here, and forty-four years earlier, the Prussian chamber composer Carl Stamitz had hosted a musical academy here.
One simply cannot escape the pull of music in Leipzig: Richard Wagner was a pupil at the school of St Nikolai between 1828 and 1830 – and his rather unexceptional achievements there kept him from attending St Thomas’s School: ‘the neglect of my school duties reached a degree which necessitated a break with the school altogether’, the great composer of opera remembers his young years. At least Wagner was baptised at St Thomas’s Church, where he might well have been inspired by Bach’s spirit. On 1 November 1862, Wagner conducted the debut performance of the prelude to his opera ‘Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg’ at the old Gewandhaus.
Wagner left his home town in 1834, but continued to be a welcome guest at the house of Robert and Clara Schumann, located in today’s Inselstraße; Clara and Robert married in 1840 and lived together in Leipzig until 1844. Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy was one of the Schumanns’ peers, who lived at 12 Goldschmidtstraße between 1845 and his death in 1847. Here, he completed his ‘Elijah’ and many other works, and founded the first German conservatoire, which was not only to employ teachers such as Schumann and Niels W. Gade, but was to house students such as the later masters Grieg and Janáček.
At the time of the conservatoire’s foundation, Mendelssohn was director of the Gewandhaus Orchestra; great classical works received their debut performances at the old Gewandhaus, among them Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no. 5, Schumann’s ‘Spring’ Symphony, and Brahms’s Violin Concerto. In those days, there was space for an audience of five-hundred, and this capacity was expanded in the new building of 1882, which was destroyed during the Second World War. Today’s Gewandhaus offers space for 1,900 listeners, and the roughly eight-hundred events that take place here every year greatly enrich Leipzig’s cultural profile.
One institution in particular is audible far beyond Leipzig’s city borders: St Thomas’s Boys Choir. Bach’s cantatas, Passion settings, and oratorios feature among the canonic repertoire of the internationally renowned ensemble. Which takes us back to Rondeau Production at the Petersstraße, for the choir produces its new recordings with the Leipzig label. Yet Rondeau’s portfolio has more to offer than only the music of Leipzig’s greatest son: in addition to works by Bach, Rondeau’s catalogue features music by Telemann, Mozart, Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Reger, Mauersberger, and many more. The label’s home emphasises the company’s deep-rooted connection with Leipzig as the city of music and with its famous inhabitants and visitors.
