July 21, 2018

Arnstadt, Germany

I think the technical term for these last two weeks of the 2017/18 season would be a “sprint finish”. I’m not sure any of us are totally sure where we are when we wake up on any particular day. That’s not to say that the last week in Schleswig-Holstein hasn’t been wonderful. The group has been performing and giving workshops at the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival since 1992, and Lübeck has become a bit of a spiritual home for us in northern Germany - one of those cities you’re really excited to come back to because you already know your way around and have a real sense of the place. After eight days there, our tour becomes a little bit more British in terms of its unconventional routing from this point onwards. We drove six hours south yesterday, and now find ourselves in the central German town of Arnstadt today - a place famous in part because Bach was the organist at the church in which we’re performing from the age of 18 (and which is now called the Bachkirche). Tomorrow we’re still in Germany, but then we’re in Switzerland, Belgium and France before next weekend. That’s in London, and then we’ve just got three concerts left - in France and very near where I grew up with West Sussex - before our Summer break.

Find out in 11 days whether we all survived!