Bach, Schumann and the Evening at the Porsche Factory in Leipzig
Leipzig, the City of Musical Giants
• NB! THIS TRIP IS NOW SOLD OUT
During Parnassos’ first few explorative trips to Leipzig, in order to plan for this trip, we had to endure that the city was de facto closed down, caused by the Covid epidemy. Those unreal days for all of us. Now, of course, Leipzig is alive and kicking again and fully open for business. It’s one of Europe’s hidden gems that we believe deserves a whole lot more attention.
Today the city is a little bit off the beaten track, but if we go back to the 19th century, Leipzig was the center of classical music in Germany. In the year 1813 it saw the biggest battle of all times, involving half a million soldiers and was also the epicenter of the fall of the Eastern European regime in 1989.
Rich both in history and technological sophistication of today, which we shall experience in full and this article will unfold.
At the end of the article we will deal with all the practical stuff, how to get there and so on. But we will for now assume we have arrived at the hotel.
Parnassos ApS is a member of Rejsegarantifonden ↗, the Danish equivalent of ABTA (You can have this confirmed by following this link↗). Just type our company name in the relevant field.
Rejsegarantifonden guarantees your money – independently of where you book your trip – whilst we guarantee your adventures.
We work with the Leipzig council’s “Leipzig Tourismus und Marketing GmbH”
Erich Honecker's Three-Course Meal
When we are all checked in at our Hotel Dorint, Friday late afternoon, September 20th, it’s time to enjoy our first dinner, that is included in the price. (There is a detailed overview at the bottom of this page that tells exactly what you get for your money).
In Leipzig, there is plenty of opportunity to combine dinner and culture. We will on this evening visit a restaurant at the outskirts of the city that has been faithful to the communist cuisine. The menu has not been updated since 1989, and you’ll find the dishes with a clear and strong flavor of class struggle.
We have the restaurant’s “living room” to ourselves – and for our evening the food is not rationed.
Gewandhaus - Brutalism at its Best
One of the finest symphony orchestras in the world, the Gewandhaus Orchestra, is housed in the building pictured here, Gewandhaus in Leipzig.
The Gewandhaus was rebuilt, from having served as a cloth factory, into a concert hall in the year 1781. From 1835 Felix Mendelsohn worked as director and conductor at the concert hall. The building has a special place within classical music. Quite a few of the greatest works saw their premiere here, such as Beethoven’s 5th Piano Concerto and Johannes Brahm’s Deutsches Requiem.
The emerging middle class in Germany during the 19th century meant that there were more and more theatergoers, which in turn caused the city to build a new and larger Gewandhaus, inaugurated in 1884. The Second World War, unfortunately left it in ruins.
Gewandhaus number 3 was ready in 1981 and it was incredibly successful. To this day, it rates among the concert halls in the world with the best acoustics. We will be seated here on Friday evening.
Porcelain in Meissen
Leipzig is our main focus. However, to ensure that we get the most out of the program, we have scheduled our trip to Meissen and Dresden on Saturday 21st September, the day after our arrival, with the bus departuring at 10 am. from our hotel in Leipzig.
A close acquaintance once told me that the city of Meissen is among the most idyllic cities in Germany, possibly the most idyllic. I usually take such statements with a grain of salt. As I have now been there I must admit that Meissen is one of the most idyllic cities in Germany, possibly the most idyllic.
We will arrive here at around noon, where you will have plenty of time to wander around and be enchanted by the charming atmosphere. Most of you will probably know that Meissen is known for its porcelain factory, which was the first, in the year 1708, to copy and produce China’s porcelain. European copy infringement.
Perhaps there may be some of you who place porcelain in the same category as, for example, embroideries, a somewhat old-fashioned phenomenon. But porcelain is comparable to music history, that reflects the society it operates in. From this you can link to everything else in Europe’s history and cultural history. Porcelain was back in the day fantastically expensive, so it was used by the nobles as a show-off for other nobles. Wonderful stories await us at the museum.
Lunch and Wine-Tasting in Meißen
It is now time for a bit wine tasting, as the city of Meissen is located in the middle of Saxony’s wine district. We will get a taste not only of the granite-based soil, but also of a 900-year-old wine-growing culture. The tasting is included in the price.
We have found exactly the right place for our lunch on Saturday with a view over the river Elbe, that cuts through the city and continues to Dresden 15 miles further on. Tt is an immensely beautiful corner of Europe.
Then we continue towards Dresden, where we will experience…
Dresden in Ruins
It is possibly a German phenomenon only, but in several German cities there is a Panometer, a wordplay combination with Panorama and Gasometer. Old gas tanks and their huge enclosed spaces have been transformed into 360-degree museums. You’ll find one of these is at the outskirts of Dresden. Right now, they show an exhibition of Dresden during the Baroque epoque with a lifelike and believable picture of the city as it looked like around year 1700 – in Bach’s days.
A new exhibition will be available while we are there – again in 360 degrees – this time with photomontages of the almost totally obliterated Dresden in 1945. The destruction was comparable to Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
We haven’t seen the exhibition for obvious reasons, but we think it will be a rather harrowing experience. Incomprehensible that something like this is happening, not that far from there, in our time.
After the visit, we go directly to the center of Dresden and see the city rebuild and again in its former majestic beauty. But still with scars, displayed in memory of the terrible events that took place during the days 13th – 15th February 1945.
After this, it’s time to visit what must surely be one of the strangest of all buildings in Germany: the Yenidze Building.
Avantgardeshow at the Yenidze Building
Hard to believe, but there are people who think that the large building, Yenidze in Dresden, shown at the above photo, is a mosque.
It is clearly a tobacco factory that is designed as a mosque. True, it is difficult to find a clear link or association with the religious gathering point of Muslims and cigarettes, but one must assume that they didn’t pay too much attention to this, while designing the factory, inaugurated in the year 1909.
But it gets even weirder than this. The architect was Martin Hammitzsch, a name both you and I will instantly forget if it wasn’t for the small detail that he was married to Angela, the elder sister of… Adolf Hitler! The latter stole all the attention from his siblings.
During the Corona crisis, when everything was closed and switched off, the undersigned went to Yenidze, took hold of the handle of one of the side doors and found it unlocked. And then in Germany! Sloppy.
I therefore had the building to myself. I reached its enormous dome (which was however locked) peered in and was struck by its beauty.
I decided then and there, that when the Covid virus would finally taper off, we would arrange something here. Saturday 21st September at 8 pm, around sunset, we will sit in front of a theatre stage. Here we will experience an avant-garde show – just wait – in a dome of otherworldly beauty.
Afterwards, our bus will take us back to Leipzig, an hour and a bit’s drive.
Tracking the Notenspur
We have arrived at Sunday 22nd September. Saturday would have been a long day – all our days are compact – so we will begin today’s “hardships” at 10:00 a.m.
The photo shows the Grassi Museum with one of the world’s largest collections of period instruments, such as the lute, viola d’amore and clavichord which, from the early 19th century onwards would no longer be used in the modern symphony orchestre and therefore withered away. During the week, you have the opportunity to go on a rediscovery among these forgotten instruments, the sounds of which have since then faded, sounds that our great-great-grandparents regularly listened to.
However, what you should notice in the picture is the silver design. It is the logo of the world’s only music route, Die Notenspur, a sign embedded everywhere on the 5-kilometer-long stretch, where we will find around 20 different places with a music-historical relevance. We will cover around 3-4 of the kilometers on Sunday morning. Not only do we learn about the city’s importance to classical music, we also get to know Leipzig of today.
Johann Sebastian Bach - the Godfather of Music
We will have time for a short break at the hotel, before we around 3 pm will walk towards the most sacred of places in town, the Johann Sebastian Bach Museum, adjacent to the St. Thomas church, where Bach worked the last 27 years of his life.
(if you are a morning person, an early bird, you should consider going to the church, where there each Sunday is a mass followed by a motet, exactly as during the days of Bach, whose life spanned the years 1685 – 1750).
The house was in those days inhabited by the Bose family and is situated next to the building, where the Bach family lived. Bach and Bose were close friends, the latter god parents to one of Bach’s children.
We will have a guided tour of the museum – in English – before we head to the Summer Saal, where we in corporation with the Schumann Haus Museum in Leipzig has arranged our first private classical concert of the trip. The program has not yet been decided, but naturally the emphasis will be on Bach’s works.
Dinner Sunday 22nd September
We have come to Sunday evening.
Leipzig Bayerischer Bahnhof is Germany’s first and oldest railway station, inaugurated in 1842, while the Schumann family – mentioned later in the article – lived in the city. The station has since then been closed and transformed into a restaurant, which we will visit and where we will taste a special regional dish with a wonderful story attached.
I have been wondering a bit about the fact that there is one train station in Germany that is the oldest. There must surely have been two stations that opened at the same time, otherwise what would be the point? Or maybe there was a connection to a train station abroad? It must be investigated.
We will end the day at an elegant bar with a view over St. Thomas Church, where Johann Sebastian Bach worked and composed during most of his career.
Our Own Hop-on-Hop-off Bus
Leipzig has a population of around 1 million, comparable to Copenhagen. In other words, a city that has a certain weight without being unmanoeuverable. There is one more thing: while Saxony was an independent state, before the proclamation of The German Empire in the year 1871, Dresden was the administrative center of the state, Leipzig the cultural ditto. It somewhat still holds today. Dresden is yet another “Copenhagen” size-wise.
There is therefore a very large concentration of cultural jewels in Leipzig. And the city is beautifully green surrounded by large lakes. We shall see a number of both lakes and pearls during our own Hop-On-Hop-Off bus tour on Monday morning.
Finally, Leipzig played a decisive role in the fall of the GDR. We will see it all from our bus, all served as small tastings, so those of you who choose to stay one or more days after the journey’s official conclusion, can revisit the Stasi Museum, the museum of fine arts, the Grassi museum, the botanical garden, the zoo, go canoeing or cycling. Leipzig is a hip city, as well. It’s a university city, where young people have a good grip on the city’s activities.
When we have been criss-crossing the city for a couple of hours, the bus takes us to that point of the journey, which fully fulfills our slogan. An afternoon and evening as none other.
The Carrera Dinner at the Porsche Factory
Porsche’s factory is located close to Leipzig. We will visit it on Monday 23rd September. This is an unmovable feast, the only day in the autumn where Porsche could offer the following to us. The factory is a world of its own, almost literally (we have to bring our passports to enter the area).
Here we will find a restaurant that takes care of corporate events for companies with a certain magnitude. And takes care of the customers who collect their brand-new Porsche directly from the factory, where they are offered lunch. A generous gesture.
And who takes care of us, of course! We are honored that Porsche is opening their gates for us. Before we sit down at the dining table in classy surroundings in their futuristic tower, they’ll offer us a tour at their factory, where we can be captivated by their cars.
After our visit to the production buildings – and before dinner – we need to do one more thing…
Living in the Fast Lane
Of course, we have to try their race-track, while we are here. Of course! During our visit we will experience 25 minutes of acceleration and g-force. Their event department has 10 top-tuned race cars at their disposal for us. And with them follows 10 top tuned professional drivers. They will take us on an unforgetable ride, pushing the machines to their limits.
Naturally, it’s your choice if you just want the ride at a moderate speed of 100 miles/hour – or if you want the driver to push the engine to its maximum.
The usual price of the pleasure is € 450, but as we have purchased for all of us, the price tag is a whole lot less unbridled.
The question that one might pose is, is this just toys for boys? We do think it appeals to both genders. But if you have no wish whatsoever to sit in one of the best produced cars in the world and next to a super sexy professional driver, I’m sure we can figure something out anyway.
The video below will give you an indication of what awaits us at Porsche, Leipzig.
Our guided tour, the tour on the track with no speed limit, a glass of champagne at the entrance to their museum followed by dinner is included in the price, whereas the absolutely reasonably priced wines during the dinner is between you and the restaurant.
Blüthner - A Mittelstand Factory
You are undoubtedly familiar with the term, Mittelstand, a German expression that covers small to medium-sized German companies with a set of traditional and rather appealing characteristics such as family-owned, independent with a social responsibility, long-term planning and flexible. We would like to visit one of them, as a kind of counterbalance to the fast and furious Porsche.
What would be more appropriate than visiting the piano factory, Blüthner, just outside Leipzig? For our private concert the same evening in the Schumann Haus, is exactly a Blüthner grand piano that sets the tone.
There are three major grand piano brands in the world, German Steinway, Austrian Bösendorfer (in whose premises we hold our private concert Friday 25th October in Vienna) and finally (East) German Blüthner.
The latter will host a small champagne reception for us in their showroom, before we enter their factory. I could imagine that the price of a Premium concert grand piano will take you by surprise. It is precisely equal to the price of a Porsche. A difficult choice if you have decided to bring back only one souvenir.
You’ve seen the Blüthner grand piano in action before. It was used in the Beatles’ Let it Be, in the films The Sting and in Hannibal Lechter’s Hannibal.
It was also found on the Zeppelin airship Hindenburg.
Countless great artists swore by Blüthner, including Debussy, Richard Wagner, Tchaikovsky… the list is long and the grand piano also received these immortal words from the composer Sergei Rachmaninov, “it was only my wife and my Blüthner that I took along with me on our journey to America ”. [in the year 1918].
The Völkerschlacht-denkmal Monument
The first time I visited the Leipzig area, I drove out of the city by one road, home by another, where this depicted monster of a Teutonic monument suddenly appeared on the horizon. And I didn’t have the first clue to what it was. My curiosity means I now know. It is 90 meters tall, its large hall 62 meter, enough space for two of Copenhagen’s Round Tower.
It commemorates the to date largest military battle the world has ever seen, which took place right here during the days 16th – 19th October 1813.
Napoleon’s troops faced the Russian, Swedish, Prussian and Austro-Hungarian armies. Napoleon suffered his first military defeat and had to retreat. 4 vs 1… It’s also a bit unfair.
All war is tragic. Half a million men faced each other during those October days. 90,000 of them lost their lives and were buried in the same area.
A morbid fact: When nature had done its part, the Leipzig residents dug up the skulls and sold them as souvenirs in the city’s tourist shops. This line of sales has since then been abandoned.
The Night Hans Christian Andersen Visited Leipzig
While the Corona-crises wreaked havoc with the world and the virus put brakes on all activities involving travelling and concerts, I had time on my hand to study the many composers Europe gave us during the 19th Century. The newfound knowledge is shared on this website via 40 small biographies, but only in Danish. Apologies.
Among them you will find the composer couple Clara Wieck Schumann and her husband Robert Schumann. They lived during their first married years in Leipzig. There’s a beautiful love story.
During the research I learned that Clara had met the most famous of Danes, Hans Christian Andersen, in Copenhagen in year 1842 while she was on tour as, by the way, one of the most celebrated pianists of the day.
In one of the letters to her husband she wrote extensively about this famous poet. Robert was intrigued, read some of Andersen’s works, got excited and wrote music for a few of his poems.
On 22nd July 1844 Andersen visited them in their home in Leipzig, where he for the first time listened to Robert’s composition. When you become aware of this, it will be a sin of biblical proportions not to act on this kind of information. We are in gratitude to the director of Schumann’s Haus, Gregor Nowak, and his colleague, Lara Galow, for being so forthcoming to our suggestion.
Tuesday 24th September, in the very same room as the couple Schumann and our famous writer was seated, 180 years ago, and where Clara played for her small audience, we will be treated to the same tunes. That part lasts only 11 minutes. It will be followed by a program of Clara (who was a composer in her own right) and Robert’s works.
En passant, after the concert the two gentlemen got pretty wasted, and they got the brilliant idea to write an opera together. Sadly, the project didn’t go beyond the hangovers.
Clara’s letter she wrote to Robert, while in Copenhagen, April 1842,
Andersen has a poetic, childish spirit, is still fairly young, very ugly and at the same time terribly vain and egoistical. Nevertheless, I rather liked him and I found that my acquaintance with him interesting and worth the effort. Under all circumstances, his virtues far outweigh his weaknesses.
Tuesday Evening 24th September
We will have our dinner on Tuesday evening at a restaurant, within walking distance of the Schumann Haus, with a splendid view of the city’s rooftops and main square.
And then, of course, we end the official journey in style. It will stay a secret until Tuesday evening, September 24 at approximately 22:00.
Leipzig on Your Own
We have arrived at Wednesday morning. For those of you who go home by bus on Wednesday early afternoon, there is enough time to enjoy the city center.
You might want to visit Runde Ecke, the Stasi headquarters in the city, which protesters avoided during the demonstrations in 1989 as it was thought the likeliest point where shots could be fired towards the crowds.
Or you could visit the Grassi Museum or Mendelsohn Haus, situated very close to our hotel. Or explore the city’s architecture, greatly influenced by its East German past, such as the State Archive pictured above.
Or take a look inside the Gewandhaus concert hall, which rises in majestic East German brutality at the main square of the city. It is praised for its excellent acoustics.
The Gewandhaus building is a third tier Phoenix bird. The first building was used as a concert hall from the year 1811, where the premiere of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony took place. Felix Mendelsohn was the driving force behind this concert, the composer who rediscovered Johann Sebastian Bach’s works, that had been forgotten for almost a century.
Dorint, our Hotel in Leipzig
Leipzig: An Hour's Flight, Two hours with a Bus
Our trips do not include the flights. This is to give you the greatest possible flexibility, such as when you want to leave on the day and from where, as well as the option to extend your stay. Maybe you want to fly to Berlin and home via Prague. The possibilities are many. The choices are yours.
Unfortunately, there is no direct train connection to Leipzig from Berlin’s new airport. But for those who want to travel in a group, we are ready with a bus – the expenses for this have kindly been financed by the Leipzig tourist association – on Friday afternoon, September 20 at 16.00 at Berlin Brandenburg Airport.
Easyjet flies at 13.55 the same day from Kastrup airport and lands at 15.00 in Berlin Brandenburg and as these words are written the plane tickets are very reasonable.
Bus from Berlin Airport to Leipzig
Musik-program (Danish version only)
And our Purpose is?
We want to create exclusive experiences – without excluding anyone.
Granted, our tours are not among the cheapest, but they are still accessible to most of those who walk in the footsteps of Hans Christian Andersen, the Danish poet who once said, ‘to travel is to live’.
The ‘trick’ is to be larger than small groups. We’re talking about around 40 people. Being many has its own dynamic. And a larger budget allows us to offer truly unique adventures, that surely will be beyond most of us if we acted on our own.
Our purpose is to tear us away from our day to day lives, to ensure that when you are back home again, you will ask yourself, ‘did I really experience what I think I experienced’?
What Exactly do you get for your 11,200 dkk? (aprox € 1,500)
- Five nights at the 4* hotel Dorint, breakfast included.
- Tickets and entrances to all concerts and museums.
- 4 dinners, including the galla dinner at the Porsche factory.
- One lunch and one wine-tasting.
- Bus transports, including transport from Berlin airport.
- Wines and snacks at our own events.
