A concert of Jewish liturgical music is due to open the Leipzig the European Musical Trail Festival in Leipzig on 14 November 2026. For a week, the series of events will explore the city’s Jewish musical heritage. The opening event at the Brody Synagogue is set to feature Strasbourg choir Le Chant Sacré and the Institute for Traditional Jewish Liturgy in Leipzig.
The programme, entitled “Shma Leipzig – Hear, Leipzig!”, combines concerts with city tours and activities for schools. It ranges from religious singing and operetta music to songs and domestic music-making. The event is organised by Leipziger Notenspur. The organisers say the focus was prompted by Saxony’s Year of Jewish Culture and the opening of the Leipzig Musical Trail, a route connecting places associated with the history of Jewish music.
The opening concert will focus on nusach, the musical style used in Jewish prayer. The organisers say it will bring together traditions from Leipzig and Strasbourg. The programme thus points to a musical practice that remains part of worship today, while also preserving older, sometimes little-known forms of singing.
The evening of 17 November at the Ariowitsch House. The Leipzig Synagogue Choir and musicologist Thomas Schinköth will commemorate Samuel Lampel. The composer, teacher and cantor worked in Leipzig for almost three decades and also championed synagogue music on the radio. Recordings of his broadcasts have been lost, according to the organisers. Lampel was deported and murdered in 1942; his compositions survived.
The story highlights the ruptures left in Leipzig’s musical life by Nazi persecution. The city’s Great Synagogue, where Lampel worked as cantor, was destroyed in 1938. But the festival is not limited to commemorating persecution: it also takes in Jewish popular entertainment, family history and contemporary musical interpretations.
A concert featuring music from the repertoire of the former New Leipzig Operetta Theatre is scheduled at Schauspiel Leipzig on 18 November. According to the organisers, the theatre operated until 1944 on the site of today’s Schauspielhaus and was a meeting place for Jewish popular entertainment. On 19 November, the ensemble Herje Mine is due to combine Sephardic songs, liturgical poetry and klezmer in its own arrangements at the Museum of Fine Arts among other works.
The city itself also features in the programme. Tours of the Waldstrasse Quarter and the Colonnades Quarter will visit former synagogues and the homes and workplaces of musicians. The first section of the Leipzig Musical Trail opened on 6 September 2026. A night of domestic music-making is planned for the festival’s finale on 21 November, with private homes also set to open their doors.
Editor: Celestina Fuentes (Article created with AI assistance).