Bonn Sings for Sana’a [Archives:2004/743/Community]

By Fahmia AL-Fotih
For the Yemen Times
Among the Germany cultural contributions to Sana'a as the capital of Arabic culture 2004, for the third time a German concert visited Yemen this week and performed a 3-day show at the Culture Center.
At the reception that German Embassy held on Monday for the members of the choir, we seized the chance to talk to Mr. Tobias Tunkel, the German Cultural Attache, who told Yemen Times: “I am so glad this Choir has come to Yemen to perform its concert tonight. It is very European musical tradition and I am very excited about how it will be appreciated by Yemeni audience. They sing songs without any instruments. It is just the voices of the choir who will give the music. It is, in fact, the third highlight in serious of musical encounters between European-German music and Yemen. This is the third one. We are looking forward to the concert tonight.”
“Of course, it is a contribution to Sana'a as Arab Culture Capital for 2004. There are other events sponsored by Germany. We are very thankful for the support of the Yemeni Ministry of Culture and Tourism as they invited these group and they gave possibility to stage the concert. It is certain that this group has contributed to strengthening our relations”
We also we talked to Luther Rudolf Mayer, the leader of the choir, who told us about the program of the concert “Our choir will perform the music of several centuries in German musical history. We are going to perform 5 songs for so-called Madrigal; songs from the 16th and 17th centuries. We will also perform 5 songs of Frichrich Silcher, romantic folk music describing the beauty of nature, of life etc.
We also have another 4 songs of Johannes Brahms, a famous German composer, who composed choral music on a very high level. He composed also great symphonies and other orchestra works.”
He said further “we have another work called “Des Feuer Reites”, by Hugo Distler. Besides another two works by Harald Gentmer, based on South-American lyrics. Both are composers of the so-called early-modern-age (1st half of the 20th century).
In addition, we will perform 6 songs of Heiut Lemmermann, still alive, called Carmina Curiosa.
We are also going to perform two 'European songs' to welcome the audience”.
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