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For the 2004/2005 season the Gewandhaus Orchestra and the University of Music and Drama "Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy" Leipzig (HMT Leipzig) founded the "Mendelssohn-Orchesterakademie". This revived the traditional connection founded by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy between the oldest music academy in Germany and the oldest bourgeois orchestra in Germany.
Gewandhaus Kapellmeister Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy stood for a symbiosis between concert and teaching institution within Leipzig, the roots of which go back to the foundation of the conservatory, the later University of Music and the present HMT Leipzig. He was the initiator and first study director of the Conservatory; members of the Gewandhaus Directorate were also members of the Conservatory Directorate, and last but not least, leading musicians of the Gewandhaus Orchestra have taught and continue to teach at the University of Music.
The Gewandhaus Orchestra and HMT Leipzig share the goal of preparing highly talented young musicians for a career in a top orchestra, combined with the desire to pass on and cultivate their own sound ideals and the traditional playing culture of the Gewandhaus Orchestra.
The two-year "Mendelssohn-Orchesterakademie" offers academists the opportunity to take part in orchestral concerts in the Gewandhaus, opera, Thomaskirche and on tour, as well as chamber music lessons at the HMT Leipzig. With the opportunity to take part in orchestral music with the Gewandhaus Orchestra and to study chamber music at the HMT Leipzig, the academists receives two offers which are independent in terms of content, time and organisation and which enable him to develop further at a high artistic level in the city of music Leipzig. In addition to the orchestral concerts with the Gewandhaus Orchestra, the academists regularly perform chamber music concerts at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, at the University of Music and Drama and at the Mendelssohn House as part of their studies of chamber music, in order to gain important practical chamber music experience in addition to their studies of chamber music.
Many graduates of the "Mendelssohn-Orchesterakademie" have acquired a position in the Gewandhaus Orchestra. Other former academists were able to obtain tutti and solo positions at home and abroad.
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