When the political dialogue turns frosty, the arts are often able to sustain communication and cultural exchange. With this goal in mind, young musicians from Germany and Russia have worked together for the past three years on a cooperative concert project under the artistic and conceptual direction of Frank Markowitsch and Michael Riedel, with performances in Berlin and Saint Petersburg as the culmination of their collaboration.
The participating ensembles – the choirs of the Hochschule for Music in Freiburg and the Rimsky Korsakov Conservatory in Saint Petersburg, the EuropaChor, and the symphony orchestra of Junges Ensemble Berlin – came together for numerous rehearsal and workshop periods in Germany and Russia, each of which ended with a performance featuring the more than 170 young performers.
In January and April 2019, sold-out concerts were held in the Berlin Philharmonie (with Elke Büdenbender as honorary patron) and the Saint Petersburg State Capella. The third concert in the project will take place on 29 June 2019, this time with the orchestra of the Freiburg Hochschule for Music in the school’s Wolfgang Hoffmann Hall.
