Louis Lewandowski Festival 2018
»The Star of Hope«
The eighth Louis Lewandowski Festival is dedicated to two historic anniversaries closely linked in all their diversity: the 80th anniversary of the pogrom in November 1938 and the 70th birthday of the State of Israel.
The home of the Jewish people arose from the destruction of the Holocaust and created a rich tradition of choral music. The participating choirs will let us experience this beautiful heritage.
November pogrom as a symbol for the subsequent extermination of the Jews and the founding of the State of Israel are thematically very closely linked, since the founding of the State of Israel is to be understood as a response to the mass murder in the Shoah.
After a short musical commemoration we will turn to the creative, positive power of Israeli choral music in all its facets and richness. In it the reference to the construction of the country with its people and landscapes, to the revived Hebrew language, to the Jewish religion, to the Bible, to name but a few examples, found its artistic, identity-generating expression. It is also a mirror of the social development of the country. While in the initial phase the focus was on the music of Ashkenazic Jews from Europe, over the years it became more diverse and depicted the various ethnic groups living in the country. The festival wants to do justice to this diversity and spans 70 years of Israel.
Choirs of the 2018 festival
Festival Magazine 2018
Impressions 2018
Impressionen vom Louis Lewandowski Festival 2018 – Konzerte, Menschen, Chöre und ein Blick hinter die Kulissen des 8. Festivals.
Choral Music Landscape Israel
The foundation for Israeli choral music was laid decades before the establishment of the Jewish state, in the Yishuv, the Jewish settlement in Palestine during the British Mandate.
Anna Segal – world premiere of the oratorio Todesfuge
Paul Celan's "Death Fugue" was the basis for Anna Segal's oratorio "Death Fugue", which premieres at the Louis Lewandowski Festival.
GDR special stamp for the Reconstruction of the New Synagogue
Among the 62 special stamps that the last stamp year of the former GDR comprised were two dedicated to the reconstruction of the New Synagogue. One showed a portrait of the New Synagogue, the other a portrait of Louis Lewandowski.
four Israelis in Berlin
Schlendert man durch die Straßen und Gassen Berlins muss man nicht lange suchen oder ganz genau hinhören, um die glücklichen und nicht immer leisen Klänge der Hebräischen Sprache zu vernehmen. Jüdisches Leben pulsiert wieder in Berlin. Jüdisches Leben ist zurück in der deutschen Hauptstadt.
Interview with Festival Director Nils Busch-Petersen
Nils Busch-Petersen in an interview with Festival Magazin: "The Handelsverband Berlin-Brandenburg and its members have supported the Synagogal Ensemble Berlin since 2007 and the "Louis Lewandowski Festival - World Festival of Synagogue Music" since 2011 as main sponsors and partners."
Cantor Isaac Sheffer
Cantor Isaac Sheffer, born in 1951 in Israel, has been living in Berlin for many years and has been cantor in the synagogue on Pestalozzistraße in Berlin for almost twenty years now. In 2000 he continued the legacy of the world-famous cantor Estrongo Nachama. His warm beautiful voice moves every listener.
Cantor Joseph Malovany
With his unique voice Cantor Joseph Malovany of the Fifth Ave Synagogue in New York, is one of the most famous stars of his guild. His heartfelt prayers are masterfully woven with orchestral and choral music to raise spiritual awareness and to guide the transcendence of the spirit beyond the here and now.
»Death Fugue« by Paul Celan
Black milk of morning we drink you at dusktime
we drink you at noontime and dawntime we drink you at night
we drink and drink
we scoop out a grave in the sky where it’s roomy to lie
There’s a man in this house who cultivates snakes and who writes
THE ABRAHAM GEIGER COLLEGE
Following the call and need of many Jewish communities inGermany for comprehensively trained cantors, a decade ago in 2008, the Abraham Geiger College was founded at the University of Potsdam with the support of the families of Jim and Stephen K.Breslauer.