Leipzig

The Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra was 97 years old when Felix Mendelssohn became its conductor in 1840.At 250 years of age, it is Europe's oldest orchestra, and its concert Wednesday night at the Kennedy Center under its music director Kurt Masur made one wish that its traditions continue to be vibrant as long as Western symphonic music is performed.Orchestral playing in Leipzig has not surrendered to the internationalization of style to which orchestras in Western Europe and North America long ago succumbed.

You can expect the music to sound fresh during the Leipzig String Quartet's concert on Saturday, March 2, at 8 p.m., in Howard Community College's Smith Theatre. Like the sponsoring Candlelight Concert Society, this chamber music quartet often likes to introduce audiences to contemporary classical music. The only 19th-century piece on the upcoming program is Brahms' Quartet in A minor, Op. 51, No. 2. If that selection by a great German composer seems like a natural choice for a quartet hailing from Leipzig, the rest of the program features much more recently minted music from around the world.

LEIPZIG, Germany -- In the largest demonstration in eastern Germany since the fall of communism, at least 60,000 people marched yesterday for an end to unemployment and the uncertainty that is gripping their lives.For many it was the first demonstration since the regular Monday night demonstrations in Leipzig in 1989 and 1990 for German unity and against the East German Communist government."I decided to go out on the streets again. I just couldn't sit inside and do nothing. My wife is unemployed -- she got her notice today, on Easter week.

BERLIN -- On a glorious, sunny day in Germany's reunited capital, I found myself in the dimness of the Stasi museum - a two-story concrete building that exhibits the tools that East Germany's secret police used to spy on its citizens. I came to this museum because I was impelled by the German movie The Lives of Others, which just won the Oscar for best foreign film. It offers a chilling and emotionally powerful portrait of Stasi surveillance of a fictional writer and artist couple. Directed by a young West German named Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, the movie is drawing huge crowds here, even though it's been 17 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

During the 1940s, photographer Arthur Leipzig produced hundreds of pictures documenting the lives of ordinary New Yorkers. Now 70 of the artist's images have been gathered in On Assignment, an exhibition at the Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Leipzig, now 85, explored an astonishing variety of subjects. His photo essays have ranged from children, rural laborers, winter fishing in the Atlantic and cellist Pablo Casals to southern Sudan, Mexico, pediatric hospitals and Jewish life.

Like racehorses and royalty, orchestras have bloodlines, too. And no orchestra in the world has blood any bluer than Germany's Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig. Founded in 1781 by Leipzig's civic leadership three decades after the death of Johannes Sebastian Bach, the city's most illustrious adopted son, the Gewandhaus quickly became one of Europe's most distinguished orchestras. It was from the Gewandhaus podium that 19th-century composer Felix Mendelssohn presided over the musical renaissance that placed the music of Bach at the core of the mainstream symphonic repertory.

LEIPZIG, Germany -- When Valentine Kosch went out to demonstrate that chilly October evening in Leipzig 10 years ago, she was fully prepared to be shot. If she did not return by 10 p.m., her husband was to assume the worst and take the two girls to their grandmother in Dresden to start a new life.As she said goodbye to her 6-year-old and 3-year-old, perhaps for the last time, Kosch did not tell them all this, of course. She explained to the elder child that she was walking around the city's inner ring with some friends so that teachers would be nicer to their pupils.

LEIPZIG, Germany - In April 1945, as World War II was coming to an end, James W. Jensen, a young assistant signals officer in the Army's V Corps bumped along the German countryside in his military jeep to courier information to commanders waiting in Leipzig. Allied forces had entered this town in eastern Germany a week earlier, and what he saw was a desolate and bleak city, empty from the recent battle and destroyed by years of war. After delivering his message of codes and ciphers to the waiting officers, he and several soldiers explored the town and wandered into the town hall, an ornate stone building that had escaped much of the allied bombing.

Imagine Peter Shaffer's Amadeus brought to you by the Marx Brothers and you pretty much get the gist of Itamar Moses' play Bach at Leipzig, which is in production at Rep Stage on the campus of Howard Community College through April 1. The 1722 appointment of Johann Sebastian Bach as music director of the Church of St. Thomas in Leipzig, Germany, was, without a doubt, the momentous hiring in music history. It is not that old J.S. had been a slouch in his earlier gigs. During his six-year hitch at Cothen, for example, he had composed the Brandenburg concertos, the Four Orchestral Suites, his seven keyboard concertos, and Book I of the Well-Tempered Clavier, among others.

Leipzig, Germany. -- If you have ever wondered how members of the Politburo of the defunct East German Communist regime lived while on the road, the old town of Leipzig beckons. Here are beautifully restored medieval buildings, ancient churches, the largest railroad station in all Europe, the new headquarters of the renowned Gewandhaus orchestra and the site of the annual Leipzig Fair. But one place not mentioned even in the latest guidebooks is the Gaestehaus am Park, or guesthouse in the park, at 14 Schwaegrichenstrasse.

Imagine Peter Shaffer's Amadeus brought to you by the Marx Brothers and you pretty much get the gist of Itamar Moses' play Bach at Leipzig, which is in production at Rep Stage on the campus of Howard Community College through April 1. The 1722 appointment of Johann Sebastian Bach as music director of the Church of St. Thomas in Leipzig, Germany, was, without a doubt, the momentous hiring in music history. It is not that old J.S. had been a slouch in his earlier gigs. During his six-year hitch at Cothen, for example, he had composed the Brandenburg concertos, the Four Orchestral Suites, his seven keyboard concertos, and Book I of the Well-Tempered Clavier, among others.

Romance is what March of the Penguins is all about," says Adam Leipzig, president of National Geographic Feature Films. "I hope it gets nominated for best kiss at the MTV movie awards."

During the 1940s, photographer Arthur Leipzig produced hundreds of pictures documenting the lives of ordinary New Yorkers. Now 70 of the artist's images have been gathered in On Assignment, an exhibition at the Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Leipzig, now 85, explored an astonishing variety of subjects. His photo essays have ranged from children, rural laborers, winter fishing in the Atlantic and cellist Pablo Casals to southern Sudan, Mexico, pediatric hospitals and Jewish life.

Like racehorses and royalty, orchestras have bloodlines, too. And no orchestra in the world has blood any bluer than Germany's Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig. Founded in 1781 by Leipzig's civic leadership three decades after the death of Johannes Sebastian Bach, the city's most illustrious adopted son, the Gewandhaus quickly became one of Europe's most distinguished orchestras. It was from the Gewandhaus podium that 19th-century composer Felix Mendelssohn presided over the musical renaissance that placed the music of Bach at the core of the mainstream symphonic repertory.

LEIPZIG, Germany - In April 1945, as World War II was coming to an end, James W. Jensen, a young assistant signals officer in the Army's V Corps bumped along the German countryside in his military jeep to courier information to commanders waiting in Leipzig. Allied forces had entered this town in eastern Germany a week earlier, and what he saw was a desolate and bleak city, empty from the recent battle and destroyed by years of war. After delivering his message of codes and ciphers to the waiting officers, he and several soldiers explored the town and wandered into the town hall, an ornate stone building that had escaped much of the allied bombing.

LEIPZIG, Germany -- When Valentine Kosch went out to demonstrate that chilly October evening in Leipzig 10 years ago, she was fully prepared to be shot. If she did not return by 10 p.m., her husband was to assume the worst and take the two girls to their grandmother in Dresden to start a new life.As she said goodbye to her 6-year-old and 3-year-old, perhaps for the last time, Kosch did not tell them all this, of course. She explained to the elder child that she was walking around the city's inner ring with some friends so that teachers would be nicer to their pupils.

Romance is what March of the Penguins is all about," says Adam Leipzig, president of National Geographic Feature Films. "I hope it gets nominated for best kiss at the MTV movie awards."

BERLIN -- On a glorious, sunny day in Germany's reunited capital, I found myself in the dimness of the Stasi museum - a two-story concrete building that exhibits the tools that East Germany's secret police used to spy on its citizens. I came to this museum because I was impelled by the German movie The Lives of Others, which just won the Oscar for best foreign film. It offers a chilling and emotionally powerful portrait of Stasi surveillance of a fictional writer and artist couple. Directed by a young West German named Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, the movie is drawing huge crowds here, even though it's been 17 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Arthur Leipzig was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1918 but did not take up photography until the 1940s. In his photographs, he concentrated on people, the diverse cultures reflected in New York life, and especially children. "Growing Up in New York," an exhibit of his work, is on view at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. One of the best-known of his images is "King of the Hill" (1943), which was included in Edward Steichen's "Family of Man" exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in 1955.

Beethoven, the Nine Symphonies. Franz Konwitschny, Leipzig Radio Chorus, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. Berlin Classics 0020 005 (six CDs; also includes overtures to "Coriolan," "Fidelio," "Creatures of Prometheus" and "Leonore" I-III)Beethoven, The Nine Symphonies. John Eliot Gardner, the Monteverdi Choir, Orchestre Revolutionaire et Romantique. Archiv 439-900-2 (five CDs and a bonus interview CD)At first it appears that these two sets of Beethoven symphonies should be polar opposites. We have the Leipzig Gewandhaus, )