Photo: © Robert Kothe
It started in the early 80s when two students from the (East) Berlin music college “Hanns Eisler” shared a locker for their guitars, sheet music and other belongings. This is how Wolfgang Katschner and Hans-Werner Apel met, who soon discovered their interest in baroque music and the historically informed performance practice that was not yet established at the time – playing music as it would have been common at the time it was written. Historical or replica instruments are part of these approaches. And it can only be an approximation, because no one can prove what Bach’s music sounded like in Bach’s time.
Katschner and Apel switched from guitars to lutes and started as a duo; This has long since grown into a large-scale project that is both creative and successful. The Lautten Compagney, which they founded 40 years ago and is currently celebrating its anniversary with a series of concerts, is its own musical cosmos, with a center of gravity made up of musicians who take part very regularly and a constantly expanding artistic network.
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At some point the ensemble began to push the boundaries of baroque music. The result of this constant search and discovery are many happy fusions; musical joint ventures across genres and time boundaries. It’s not for nothing that three CDs of her now hard-to-understand oeuvre are called “Timeless”, “Time Travel” and “Time Zones”. The Lautten Compagney still has its home turf in the Baroque era, but again and again it ventures far out into the open, swinging and rocking at the same time. Which just proves that Bach, Handel and Co. already grooved like crazy; you just have to discover it. At the Lautten Compagney, Samuel Scheidt meets Erik Satie, Tarquinio Merula meets Philip Glass, Heinrich Schütz meets Hanns Eisler – 17th to 20th century. Meanwhile, Henry Purcell on the Beatles and Jean-Philippe Rameau on Abba. If it weren’t disrespectful, one could say: The older, the older.
It is astonishing the amount of work the Lautten Compagney puts into giving concerts with a wide variety of ensembles, staging operas and presenting literary-musical programs. And has been running its own festival for several years – Aequinox in Neuruppin, Brandenburg has quickly become a big name in the music calendar, among artists and audiences.
Lautten Compagney is a brand name that stands for high musical quality and precision. And that you have to expect a surprise at any time. The most recent CD productions illustrate the enormous range: “The Lute Songbook”, a recently released musical calling card from four decades. And the Abba adaptations with the fantastic saxophonist Asya Fateyeva, coming out soon. It remains exciting and exciting. Wherever you can see and hear this extraordinary ensemble – go!
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