‘Oh, how I envy Leipzig for its music!’ So declared the composer and pianist Clara Schumann as she lusted after a city in the grip of a creative boom. It wouldn’t be long before that envy was obliterated by the reality of circumstance. In 1840, the Schumanns moved to the Saxon city where, for four years, Clara and her husband Robert thrived at the heart of a music scene that was as rich, lively and progressive then as it apparently remains nearly two centuries later.

What Clara admired about Leipzig still holds true today. It is hard to think of another metropolis in whose music scene tradition and zeitgeist seem to co-exist so happily and so naturally. Leipzig is full of historic institutions that refuse to rest on their laurels, however much their illustrious reputations could allow them to.

Perhaps that’s because those same institutions were themselves the products of innovative thinking. Now world-famous, the Gewandhausorchester was the first civic symphony orchestra of its kind to be founded along social principles. It remains the only orchestra in the world that still plays almost every month in a church, a concert hall and an opera house.

The acclaimed Gewandhaus (photo: LTM / Punctum)

The city’s conservatory was itself born of radical thinking, as the first educational establishment for the professional training of musicians in Germany. It rapidly proved a mecca for aspiring student instrumentalists, singers and composers from all over Europe. Opera Leipzig may be one of the oldest musical theatre stages in Europe, but it has always done things differently - from the transformative reign of Gustav Brecher in the 1920s to its pride, a century later, in becoming the first opera company to stage of all Leipzig-born Richard Wagner’s mature music dramas in the space of three weeks.

In the spirit of all this, Leipzig’s classical music scene is constantly adapting to the wider world. Think Leipzig, and you may rightly think Bach, Mendelssohn and Wagner. Increasingly, the city is looking to extend that list to include the rich but overlooked cohort of composers whose talents are sometimes obscured by the bright lights of their more famous peers - think Clara Schumann, Hanns Eisler, Albert Lortzing and Brecher himself. There are riches to be discovered among their works, and Leipzig is busy making sure they can be heard in the best circumstances possible.

Leipzig is, in fact, constantly re-thinking how it might celebrate and amplify its own unrivalled musical legacy. In recent years major new festivals have sprung up to enliven the creative fruits of the great figures whose reputations still resound through this place. Gustav Mahler, who wrote pivotal symphonies in the city, is celebrated at the biennial Gewandhaus Festival in 2023 that will see his complete symphonic oeuvre delivered courtesy of visiting international orchestras and, not least, the awesome power and distinctive sonority of the Gewandhaus Orchestra and its leading conductors, Andris Nelsons among them.

Leipzig’s illustrious former resident Bach (photo: LTM / Tom Williger)

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, who in helping to establish both the orchestra and Leipzig’s conservatoire laid the infrastructural foundations that Mahler, Brahms, Wagner and others so benefitted from, is marked in his own annual festival taking place every Autumn that this year will mark 175 years since the composer’s death. And, of course, there is a certain Thomaskirke Kantor. Every June Leipzig comes to life in celebration of the organist, conductor, choir-leader and most significant composer of the entire Baroque era, Johann Sebastian Bach. At the heart of the festival is the ancient boys’ choir founded in 1212 that Bach trained for over two decades.

Of course, there are ways to explore Leipzig’s rich musical history even when the city’s festival calendar is not in full swing. The city’s orchestras, choirs and opera house operate year round, as do the countless museums including the former homes of the Schumanns and of Mendelssohn, the Bach Museum and the various historic city churches. And you don’t even have to attend a performance. Perhaps the best way of all to discover the physical as well as ephemeral legacy of three centuries of music is to hop on the Leipzig Music Trail - a walking route connecting 23 locations of historic musical significance.

A New Era at Opera Leipzig

It was certainly not an easy act to follow. At the end of 2022’s unprecedented summer of Wagner, General Music Director Ulf Schirmer concluded his tenure after 13 transformative years at helm of Opera Leipzig, the last 11 of which he also served as intendant. It was a fitting end to an illustrious period in the history of an opera company that can trace its roots back to 1693.

Typically, the city’s opera company is looking forwards, not backwards. An entirely new management team takes over at Opera Leipzig for the 2022-23 new season, benefitting from all the momentum, optimism and enhanced capabilities that have taken root in the last decade. Tobias Wolff, the Leipzig-trained former Generaldirektor of the Göttingen International Handel Festival, takes over as Intendant, leading a new team that will include Music Director Christoph Gedschold.

Immediately, the new season at Opera Leipzig reveals the freshness and ambition of the new regime. ‘My team and I put heart and soul into creating a programme that we are convinced audiences will love,’ said Wolff of his new season, promising a year of ‘sensuous, compelling and poignant’ art at the elegant theatre on Augustusplatz.

The St Thomas Boys Choir at the heart of Bach celebrations (photo: LTM / Philipp Kirschner)

Notable details include the first production of Verdi’s Shakespearean tragedy Otello for more than 50 years and the Leipzig premiere of Benjamin Britten’s tale of small-town fury and character assassination, Peter Grimes. New productions of Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Handel’s Giulio Cesare will be seen (the latter initiating a new partnership with theatres in Toulouse, Montpellier and Paris).

In keeping with Leipzig’s spirit of musical discovery, the season will present a continuous celebration of the great Austrian operetta composer Leo Fall, and a rare opportunity to hear Undine - the magical romantic opera by the composer and former Leipzig-resident Albert Lortzing. This enchanting work will whet the appetite for a full festival of the music of Lortzing - who pioneered the form of German comic opera known as ‘spieloper’ - scheduled for 2026.

Again, there is no resting on laurels here. In its ambitious new 360-degree festival, Opera Leipzig promises to reach new generations and geographies in the city by starting a conversation about the biggest issues of the day - sustainability, diversity and digitalization. As well as hosting a conference on the subject, this season-opening event will create youth opera, bring live opera to creatively neglected neighbourhoods in the city and inaugurate audio-described performances on the company’s own main-stage.

All that, and the team will soon be ready to unveil its plans for the biennial festival at the opera house, which returns in 2024. Music in Leipzig may be rooted in tradition, but it never stands still.

Find out more: www.leipzig.travel