Weimar-Jerusalem Project's Young Symphonic Orchestra Re-Building Bridges Between Germany and Israel

A unique youth orchestra has come about through an unusual collaboration between two high schools for music: one in Germany and the other in Israel.

The Young Symphonic Orchestra, made up of musicians from the Weimar High School of Music and the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, will perform in Jerusalem on October 3. The orchestra is led by German conductor Michael Sanderling.

Israeli composer Michael Wolpe is the leader of the Weimar-Jerusalem Project that brought the young musicians together. He told the Jerusalem Post, "This project is both an homage to Jewish musicians of the past and the mutual history that Jews and Germans once shared, as well as a rare opportunity to collaborate with young German musicians."

The location of Weimar is significant because of a new music festival that once existed here. Many composers premièred their works in Weimar--from Franz Liszt to Arnold Schoenberg to Kurt Weill. When festival organizers refused to bow to Nazi censorship demands, the festival was shut down.

Of course, Weimar has another, much darker side: In the forest at the edge of the city, Nazi authorities built the Buchenwald concentration camp, where many German Jews perished during World War II.

It is in response to the tragic history of Weimar that this youth orchestra was formed. The orchestra will perform music of Gustav Mahler, Felix Mendelssohn, Dmitri Shostakovich and 20th-century German Jewish composer Berthold Goldschmidt.

An announcement on the Jerusalem Academy's website states, "The program is a story in sound, dedicated to the history of Jewish composers in central Europe from the end of the 18th century up to the Holocaust, the event that would sever the continuity of their involvement and contribution."

The orchestra also toured Germany earlier this summer. At the orchestra's first concert in Germany, German president Joachim Gauck asked for forgiveness for the sins of the past and spoke hopefully of the future.

The Weimar-Jerusalem Project is intended to be an ongoing collaboration between the people of Weimar and Jerusalem, through the establishment of the Young Symphonic Orchestra.