Light and Gold
Advent concerts by the Music High School Schloss Belvedere in Weimar and Berlin
The Music High School Schloss Belvedere is performing its Advent program twice this year. First, the choir, orchestra, and other musicians from the Weimar Music University's Centre for the Highly Gifted will perform on December 3 at the Französische Friedrichstadtkirche in Berlin. They will perform the “Advent Concert 2025” for the Thuringian State Representation to the Federal Government, for which a personal invitation from the state government is required.
In Weimar, the Advent concert can then be experienced as a public event on Sunday, December 14, at 5:00 p.m. in the Stadtkirche St. Peter und Paul (Herderkirche). The lineup is as diverse as the instruments at the Music High School: the orchestra accompanies vocal and organ soloists, the brass players come together in various formations, the choir sings a cappella – and the choir and orchestra perform together.
“The audience can expect a varied program – from well-known Advent songs in arrangements for wind instruments or choir to the dreamy fairy-tale world of Humperdinck's Sleeping Beauty Overture and a lively finale with Dvořák's Seventh Slavonic Dance,” says Joan Pagès Valls, artistic director of the Centre for the Highly Gifted at the Music High School Schloss Belvedere. “The stylistic diversity of this concert begins in the early Baroque period and extends to the contemporary repertoire.”
The choir of the Music High School Schloss Belvedere, conducted by Marian Grosew and Ingo Geppert, will sing songs including “Machet die Tore weit” (Open Wide the Gates), “Lux Aurumque (Light and Gold)” and “Vom Himmel hoch” (From Heaven Above). The young soprano Natalie Miller from Marietta Zumbült's singing class will also perform three “Biblical Songs” op. 99 by Antonín Dvořák, accompanied by the orchestra of the Music High School.
Together, the choir and orchestra will then perform Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy's “Verleih uns Frieden gnädiglich” (Grant us peace graciously), followed by the symphony from Johann Sebastian Bach's cantata “Wir müssen durch viel Trübsal” (We must go through much tribulation) BWV 146.
The concert is a benefit event in aid of the Central Germany Children's Hospice as part of the UNESCO project school activities of the Music High School Schloss Belvedere Weimar.
Further information:www.musikgymnasium-belvedere.de
[24 November 2025]