Summer Vibes
Students at the Music High School Schloss Belvedere perform to mark the end of the school year
To mark the end of the school year, the young artists of the Music High School Schloss Belvedere will perform their traditional summer concert—with free admission—on Saturday, July 11, at 7:00 p.m. in the school’s concert hall. The Music High School’s orchestra will transport the audience to the late Romantic era, while the choir will take them further into the world of contemporary music.
The evening’s soloist, Paula Wettengel, will add a special touch to the evening with her harp playing. In Gabriel Pierné’s “Concert Piece in G-flat Major for Harp and Orchestra, Op. 39,” the twelfth-grader will showcase her skill on the instrument, which she has already demonstrated in several competitions over the past few years. Most recently, she impressed the judges two months ago at the international competition of the Harp Association in Slovenia; she has also won prizes at competitions in Turkey and Ukraine. Paula Wettengel studies in the class of Prof. Andreas Wehrenfennig.
Under the direction of Prof. Joan Pagès Valls, the orchestra will also perform Jean Sibelius’s symphonic poem “Finlandia,” Op. 26, as well as George Bizet’s First Orchestral Suite from the incidental music for Alphonse Daudet’s drama “L’Arlésienne” (The Girl from Arles). Thus, a longing for freedom will first fill the hall, followed by—as the school’s director, Gerold Herzog, is already looking forward to—“folkloric freshness and summery shimmer.”
The choir of the Music High School, conducted by Marian Grosew, will then perform works by Fulvio Caldini, Agneta Sköld, and Wolfram Buchenberg. These pieces of contemporary sacred choral music explore a variety of stylistic directions. The choir will take the audience on a journey through serene, festive, jubilant, and intense a cappella soundscapes. As Gerold Herzog summarizes, the choir sings of “dreams of love, praise of the Creator, and the plea to share in hoped-for bliss.”
The summer concert is a benefit event in support of the Gemeinnützige Kinderhospiz Mitteldeutschland GmbH and takes place as part of the UNESCO project work at the Music High School Schloss Belvedere Weimar.
Up to 120 students from all over Germany and abroad live and study at the Music High School Schloss Belvedere. The professional musical training is conducted in close collaboration with the Franz Liszt University of Music in Weimar and is led by its professors and lecturers.
In addition to courses in music theory, music history, and rhythmics, students receive comprehensive practical training. This includes instrumental lessons, chamber music, orchestral and choral music, as well as composition, improvisation, and accompaniment. Many graduates of the Music High School now hold leading positions in major national and international orchestras or work as faculty members at German Music universities.
[7 July 2026]