»Jesus ist das schönste Licht«. »Hallische Lieder« at the historical site.

As part of the Handel Festival, the symposium »The Freylinghausen rediscovered editorially« will be followed by an evening concert, the venue and program of which correspond entirely to the topic discussed during the day. The venue is the very hall of the Historic Orphanage, inaugurated in 1711, which – then called the Prayer and Singing Hall, today the Freylinghausen hall – provided a space for the legendary »Singing lessons« in Francke's steadily growing school town and from which the »New Songs« of the Geistreiches Gesangbuch were introduced to the world.

A selection of particularly characteristic »New Songs« from the collection is offered in terms of text and/or melody, which for the first time includes a series of outstanding song creations by Francke's pupil Christian Friedrich Richter, still well-known today as an orphanage doctor and pharmacist, thus bringing this second important aspect of his work back into focus. Accordingly, the title of a Richter song, Jesus ist das schönste Licht (Jesus is the most beautiful light), is also the title of the concert, in which the audience is invited to sing along at some points – in keeping with the practice of »singing lessons« in the past.

The performers are musicians who are well established in their respective fields thanks to their busy concert schedule and CD productions: soprano Hanna Zumsande, tenor Georg Poplutz, viola da gamba player Juliane Laake and organist Stefan Kießling. The choice of the viola da gamba as a continuo instrument is special in that the Halle songwriter Christian Friedrich Richter, who is strongly represented in the program, was himself a viola da gamba player.

Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Hirschmann from the Institute of Musicology at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg will provide an introduction to the concert.