On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Thomas Mann’s birth, this year’s festival program will also be enriched by contributions from Lithuania – from those who keep the writer’s memory alive there. In cooperation with the Thomas Mann Cultural Center in Nida, one of the country’s most innovative and renowned ensembles will come to Lübeck: the St. Christopher Chamber Orchestra of Vilnius. On Saturday, September 13, at 8:00 p.m., the orchestra invites audiences to a concert entitled “Musical Bridge: Nida – Lübeck” in the Kolosseum Hall. At the heart of the program are works by Lithuanian composers.
A happy historical coincidence: this year, Lithuania is also celebrating a 150th anniversary – that of Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, the most famous Lithuanian painter and one of the pioneers of Symbolism. Thus, music from his pen will also be heard in the concert.
According to musicologists, the St. Christopher Chamber Orchestra, which has existed since the 1980s and is open to artistic experimentation, provides ideal conditions for the interpretation of contemporary Lithuanian music. The Lübeck audience will now be able to experience this as well: the program includes works by three renowned representatives of contemporary Lithuanian music – Faustas Latėnas, Algirdas Martinaitis, and Vidmantas Bartulis. The repertoire will also be complemented by a work of the German composer Felix Mendelssohn.
The event is a cooperation between two institutions that keep alive Thomas Mann’s legacy as a symbol of literature, democracy, and historical memory: the Heinrich and Thomas Mann Center Buddenbrookhaus in Lübeck and the Thomas Mann Cultural Center in Nida on the Curonian Spit, in collaboration with the Museums of Neringa.
The Cultural Center, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, was founded in the summer house built by Thomas Mann in Nida during the interwar period – a house that has survived later historical upheavals. In this building, today best known as the “Thomas Mann House,” there is also a memorial museum dedicated to the writer. The Cultural Center was established with the aim of preserving and making visible the intellectual heritage of Thomas Mann and his family.
The centerpiece of the Center’s activities is the annual International Thomas Mann Festival, which this year was organized in Nida for the 29th time. The festival week combines contributions from music, literature, art, and film into an integrated program curated by an international board of intellectuals and scholars. The concert in Lübeck will be opened with a greeting by Professor Dr. Ruth Leiserowitz, historian and long-time former chair of this board. In her research, she has devoted particular attention to the history of East Prussia and the Curonian Spit.
“This concert is an opportunity for us to engage in a lively cultural dialogue with the audience from Thomas Mann’s home region. As festival organizers, we are used to playing the role of host, but this initiative gives us the chance to view our daily work and its meaning from a different perspective,” explained historian Dr. Lina Motuzienė, director of the Thomas Mann Cultural Center and the Museums of Neringa. “We are very much looking forward to building this symbolic bridge and to presenting to the Lübeck audience one of the most exciting Lithuanian ensembles in the field of classical music, along with an original program.”
Tickets are available at:
https://die-luebecker-museen.de/programm
or at the Kolosseum box office.
The concert is organized by the Thomas Mann Cultural Center in Nida in cooperation with partners in Lübeck, with the aim of building a cultural bridge between Lithuania and Germany.Partners and supporters:
Lithuanian Council for CultureNeringa Municipality
Neringa Museums