Around Germany in Music
by John Clarke
At the Barossa Konzert the audience was taken on a musical journey around Germany. The Barossa Konzert, arranged by the Barossa German Language Association for Adelaide German Week (the only event outside of the Adelaide region), featured the Tanunda Liedertafel and the Barossa Trio – Sarah Afshin Pour (piano), Greg Pfeiffer (Baroque flute) and Shae Heinrich (‘cello).
Nuriootpa’s St Petri Lutheran Church with its fine accoustics allowed the Liedertafel, the all male choir which this year celebrated its 175th anniversary, to demonstrate the vocal excellence that has made it a popular feature of Barossa Valley life. The choir opened the program with a bracket of German songs, ranging from the delights of wine to the nostalgic yearning for a home far away.
The Barossa Trio were the tourist guides on the German musical journey that followed. Their program began in Eisenach (the birthplace of Johann Sebastian Bach), moving on in a clockwise direction to the birthplaces of other famous composers: Leipzig (Johann Christian Bach), Zwickau (Robert Schumann), Erasbach (Christoph Willibald Gluck), deviating to Salzburg in Austria (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart), before returning to Bonn (Ludwig van Beethoven), back again to Eisenach (Johann Sebastian Bach) and on to Halle (the birthplace of George Frideric Handel).
Echoing the Liedertafel’s Friedrich Silcher’s song In der Ferne (Far away) was Robert Schumann’s Von fremden Ländern und Menschen (Of foreign lands and people). And there was the Dance of the Blessed Spirits from Gluck’s opera Orfeo ed Euridice, and the dramatic, haunting piano solo of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. The celebration of Home continued in the Liedertafel’s final bracket with the song
Heimat by Ernst Hansen, and Henry Krip’s rollicking Barossa March, the only English song and sung with gusto, brought the program to an end.
While music is a part of any German celebration, there cannot be a German celebration without food and drink. Kaffee und Kuchen (coffee and cake) were served at the conclusion of the concert.
