10/28/2011 07:07 am

Contemporary music meets Beethoven as Gewandhaus tours Europe

It’s Vienna – Paris – London – Paris – London for the musicians of the Gewandhaus Orchestra this fall. Be it the Barbican in London or the Salle Pleyel in Paris, the Gewandhaus, one of the world’s oldest, largest, and most prestigious orchestras, is performing at Europe’s greatest concert venues.

The tour sees the orchestra present a complete cycle of Beethoven's Symphonies as well as five specially commissioned contemporary works written in response to Beethoven’s music by some of today’s most influential composers. On Sunday, the Paris audience showed great appreciation of these modern-day masterpieces, enthusiastically applauding the work of German composer Steffen Schleiermacher, which the Gewandhaus played along with Beethoven’s 1st and 7th Symphonies.

The whirlwind, city-hopping fall tour presents precisely the challenge DHL, the Gewandhaus Orchestra’s Official Logistics Partner, likes to face. Despite the relative proximity of the venues, time is always of the essence and the delicate nature of the priceless cargo calls for a team that works in complete harmony. The longest leg of the tour – Vienna to Paris, some 1,200 kilometers – had to be negotiated in only 15 hours. The transport went off without a hitch and the instruments arrived at the Salle Pleyel in plenty of time for rehearsal – music to the ears of the Gewandhaus musicians.

Click here for more information on the upcoming tourdates!

CLOSE