12. - 16. November 2025

Course for violin, viola, cello and string chamber music

Prof. Gerhart Darmstadt

Assistance: Johannes Loescher, Cologne

Course works:
Solo works, duets, chamber music with and without basso continuo
from the 17th and 18th centuries
(Two harpsichords, two chest organs with transposing facilities, and two grand pianos are available for course work)

Course start: Wednesday, November 12, 2025, 3 pm
Course end: Sunday, November 16, 2025, after breakfast

Target group: Advanced string players, music students, and educators.
Participation with a "baroque" or "modern" instrument is equally possible and worthwhile.
Individuals and/or chamber music groups can register.
The number of participants is limited, so early registration is recommended.

Course content: Interpretation issues, historical performance practice, technical contexts, source material, and the intellectual and contemporary background of the works being studied.
In addition, targeted individual and group exercises will be offered for tone production, sound hierarchies, articulation, specific Baroque string techniques, posture issues, body awareness, and helpful practice strategies.

Johannes Loescher will accompany the course as a co-instructor and violin maker and will offer information on historical violin making as well as individual violin-making advice.

€ 830,00 Course fee/active for professionals
€ 780,00 Course fee/active for students
€ 590,00 Course fee for passive participation

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Prof. Gerhart Darmstadt

Gerhart Darmstadt, born in Halle/Saale in 1952, studied cello with Mirko Dorner at the Folkwang Hochschule Essen and historical performance practice with Nikolaus Harnoncourt at the Mozarteum Salzburg; he also had lessons in baroque cello with Anner Bylsma. His musicological mentor was Walter Blankenburg in Schlüchtern. From 1983-1991 he directed and organised the Hamburg Baroque Orchestra, which he founded.

Gerhart Darmstadt is one of the leading German baroque cellists. As a soloist, chamber musician, orchestral and continuo player, conductor and profound connoisseur of 17th to 19th century music, he has made a name for himself as an exceptional musician. In addition to a flexible technique and virtuosity, it is important to him to understand music as a touching language of the soul and heart and to convey the art of ideal accompaniment. His many years of involvement with the arpeggione (guitar-violoncello) from the Schubert era enable him to create completely new worlds of sound in deeply inward-looking spaces of experience. For him, the connection with the audience is an artistic process of sharing.

At the Hochschule für Musik und Theater and the Alfred Schnittke Akademie International in Hamburg, Gerhart Darmstadt teaches historical performance practice and chamber music with impulses for contemporary and forward-looking interpretation. He is a member of the Joseph Martin Kraus String Quartet and President of the International Joseph Martin Kraus Society based in Buchen (Odenwald).

Numerous courses in historical performance practice, violoncello, orchestral and chamber music, physical disposition and posture issues, advanced training seminars and performances with various orchestras, as well as lectures, introductions to works, moderated concerts, CD and radio recordings, symposia, editions and musicological publications (for example on Andante, Arpeggione, Bach, Cantabile, Gabrielli, Kraus, recitative accompaniment, Schubert, Schumann, Tempo rubato, Vivaldi) show him to be a competent and inspiring performer, as well as a scholar and teacher who constantly scrutinises music and its environment.

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Course for violin, viola, cello and string chamber music

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