Since I arrived in Arnstadt yesterday (Easter Sunday) around 5 pm, I have had so many experiences and met so many people that I cannot believe it’s only been 30 hours. Tonight I am exhausted from all the driving and the busy program I made for myself, but everything has been going splendidly, see the highlights here below.

Follow me on Instagram @weeklycantata or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/weeklycantata to see lots of photos and videos in my stories and story highlights.

Highlights

I got to hear Elina Albach’s adaptation of Bach’s Mass in B Minor for six singers, seven instrumentalists, and one narrator on Sunday evening in Arnstadt. It was inspiring, captivating, and just simply fabulous. This concert and Elina’s ideas behind it (as shared in an interview with me last week) will get its own article later this week.

I cannot quite believe it yet that I actually got to attend concerts in two of the churches where Bach used to work, in Arnstadt and Mühlhausen.

I loved visiting the Bach House in Eisenach. From attending an excellent presentation of all the keyboard instruments in the instrument room, to seeing the books Bach had in his library, to meeting the museum’s generous director and discussing plans for next year with him, it was all better than I had expected.

I was pleasantly surprised by the beautiful landscape in this region. There’s also quite a bit of variety in the landscape. Between Arnstadt and Eisenach there are hilltops that seem to pop out of the otherwise much flatter landscape, and many have fortresses on them. The route from Eisenach to Mühlhausen is extremely scenic, with beautiful rolling hills, meadows, forests, a river, and truly picturesque towns. Driving here is easy because it’s not busy on the roads. But I look forward to next year when we’ll have a professional driver and I will only have to keep my eyes on the schedule instead of on the road.

At the first concert I attended, on Sunday night in Arnstadt, I met so many people that I felt immediately confirmed and strengthened in my idea to plan a group trip for next year. It is a pretty exciting feeling.

And one random fact: the number of Bach merchandise items (including those made out of chocolate!) one can buy at the Bachhaus in Eisenach is mind boggling. If you follow @weeklycantata on Instagram, keep an eye on my stories and highlights — I will post all the chocolate there in the next few days!

Thanks for following along!

Wieneke Gorter, April 19, 2022.

Happy Easter!

These are exciting times for me. I just finished participating in a typical Dutch thing to do this time of year: I sang Bach’s St. Matthew Passion as a choir member. I was lucky to get into a choir of lovely people, work with an amazing conductor, make some new friends, and even come out of it with an engagement for a different choral singing project that will take me to Leipzig in June.

But, Leipzig is the town of the last part of Bach’s life, and I have always wanted to see the towns where he spent his youth first. So today I’m on my way to Thuringia, the region where Bach spent the first 32 years of his life.

The next four days are going to be packed with concerts of the Thüringer Bachwochen (a fantastic festival of several weeks with performances in historic Bach churches) a visit to Bach’s birth place Eisenach, and a tour of the Bach locations in Weimar.

Today we drive from Frankfurt to Arnstadt, where we attend a concert in the church where Bach held his first position as organist. In his time it was called the “Neue Kirche” (New Church), but it was renamed in the 1980s, and is now the Johann Sebastian Bach Church. Photos in the next post!

I invite you to travel with me! This week you can travel with me virtually, by following me here, on Instagram at @weeklycantata, or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/weeklycantata. I will try to post every day. Next year, you can join me in person on a trip from Frankfurt to all these Bach towns, as well as Leipzig.

Wieneke Gorter, April 17, 2022