July 16, 2018

Lubeck, Germany

Hello from very sunny Lübeck in northern Germany! We’re here as guests at the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, for whom we’re giving concerts and teaching an intensive week of masterclasses. The group has visited the SHMF for many years, and the festival is the stuff of KS-folklore, as Chris G actually proposed to his wife Steph on the last night of the week early in his time in the group!

It’s so lovely to be here, and we’ve got lots of excellent ensembles to teach this week. We’re already making great progress with them, and we have three more days of teaching to impart all the wisdom we can. It’s pretty tiring, as today and tomorrow, after a few hours’ teaching we then have concerts in the evening outside of Lubeck, so we’re rather burning the candle at both ends.

Lübeck is a very beautiful city, and was the destination for J S Bach when he walked 200 miles from Arnstadt to Lubeck to hear Dietrich Buxtehude play the organ. The city therefore feels something like hallowed ground for church musicians.

We’re now in the final 3 weeks of this term, which must be one of the busiest in KS history: we’ve been on the road for pretty much 4 months, with not many nights at home. So the holidays, commencing on 2 August, are an exciting prospect for us, despite all the lovely concerts in the diary before then. By the end of this term, we’ll have done 86 concerts since January. Wow!