Sing a Song to the Lord
The university’s top-tier chamber choir is embarking on a concert tour to Sweden
The chamber choir of the FRANZ LISZT University of Music in Weimar regularly goes on tour to other countries—as a musical embodiment of the high quality of education here. The choir’s first concert tour of the summer semester, under the direction of Prof. Jürgen Puschbeck, will take place from April 24 to May 2 in churches in Weimar, Lübeck, and Lüneburg—as well as in Sweden, with two performances in Stockholm and Västeras.
Under the title “Sing a Song to the Lord,” choir director Jürgen Puschbeck has put together a wide-ranging program of German and Scandinavian choral music, ranging from Heinrich Schütz and Franz Liszt to the contemporary Finnish composer Jaakko Mäntyjärvi.
The program will include, among other works, Heinrich Schütz’s setting of Psalm 100, “Jauchzet dem Herrn alle Welt” (Let All the Earth Rejoice in the Lord), Johann Sebastian Bach’s motet “Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied” (Sing a New Song to the Lord), the Pater Noster from Franz Liszt’s oratorio “Christus,” and “Jubilate Deo” by Swedish choir director and composer Agneta Sköld.
The church concerts will be complemented by instrumental performances by Anissa Albrecht (clarinet) and Karima Albrecht (cello), who will perform duets by Carl Stamitz and Nicolas Bacri as well as the “Disco Toccata” for cello and clarinet by Guillaume Connesson.
To kick off the tour, the chamber choir will perform on Friday, April 24 at 7:30 p.m. at the Herz Jesu Catholic Church in Weimar. Admission is free for this concert. The following Saturday, the choir will travel to the Herz-Jesu-Kirche in Lübeck for a concert, before continuing on to Sweden. Following performances at Västeras Cathedral on April 28 and Stockholm’s Storkyrkan on April 29, the tour will conclude with a final concert at the church in Lüneburg on May 1.
The chamber choir of the FRANZ LISZT University of Music in Weimar consists primarily of students in the school music program and those majoring in conducting and voice. It was founded in 1926 as a madrigal choir by Walter Rein and quickly developed into a leading ensemble at the music university. After World War II, Prof. Günter Fredrich initially continued the choral work, followed by Prof. Gerd Frischmuth from the 1970s onward.
The latter contributed significantly to the high artistic standard that the choir maintains to this day. Since 1997, Frischmuth’s former student, Prof. Jürgen Puschbeck, has led the ensemble. Puschbeck was himself a member of the Dresden Kreuzchor, studied in Weimar, and in 1986 became choir director of the Jena Philharmonic before taking over the artistic direction of the Weimar Music University Chamber Choir in 1997—and was appointed professor of choral conducting in 1998.
The choir maintains a busy concert schedule: guest performance tours have already taken it to nearly all European countries, as well as to the USA, Japan, and Israel. For many years, the ensemble has also served as an ambassador for Thuringia and Germany. Concerts for the Thuringian state representations in Berlin and Brussels have become a tradition; likewise, the choir has performed Advent concerts on multiple occasions at the request of the German Embassy in Vienna, Bratislava, and Košice.
The chamber choir primarily focuses on a cappella repertoire from the 16th to the 21st centuries, though vocal symphonic works are also an integral part of its repertoire. Here, as with other projects, the choir has collaborated with renowned conductors such as Kurt Masur, Fabio Luisi, Helmuth Rilling, Georg Christoph Biller, Ton Koopman, Konrad Junghänel, and John Butt. Concerts have been recorded by MDR, HR, BR, and ORF.
[25 March 2026]