The Leipzig Collegium Musicum Vol. 1: Music before Bach

The Neues Bachisches Collegium Musicum (NBCM) and its artistic director, Reinhard Goebel, are launching a new series, *The Leipzig Collegium Musicum, Volume 1: Music Before Bach*, which offers a vivid insight into the rich musical life of Leipzig at the beginning of the 18th century. At that time, the city was home to numerous collegia musica—academic ensembles dedicated to performing the latest vocal and instrumental works—which played a central role in shaping the city’s musical culture. Georg Philipp Telemann, Johann Friedrich Fasch, Christoph Graupner, and Johann David Heinichen were among the leading figures in these circles, even though their repertoire can only be vaguely reconstructed today. Goebel has put together a “roughly comparable” program that reflects this pre-Bach world, featuring overtures by Johann Beer and Heinichen, a horn concerto by Georg Melchior Hoffmann (all world premiere recordings), as well as concertos by Fasch, Graupner, and Telemann. The solo parts are performed by recorder player Max Volbers and Clemens Röger, principal horn of the Gewandhaus Orchestra. In 1729, Johann Sebastian Bach took over Telemann’s Collegium Musicum, which from then on performed at Zimmermann’s Coffee House and became a cornerstone of Leipzig’s musical life, ultimately leading to the founding of the Großes Konzert and the Gewandhaus Orchestra in 1743. The NBCM was founded in 1979 by members of the Gewandhaus Orchestra under the direction of Max Pommer and has since earned an international reputation through acclaimed recordings. Since 2021, it has been under the direction of Reinhard Goebel, a pioneer of historically informed performance practice and founder of Musica Antiqua Köln.