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The Thüringischer Akademischer Singkreis (= TAS) was founded in 1969 Originally the choir was made up of students from the Thuringian cities of Erfurt, Jena and Weimar. Very soon its ranks were being filled by singers from all over East Germany, which lent the ensemble its distinctive qualities. The choir was in a position to perform a wide-ranging repertoire (choral works by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and Monteverdi, Heinrich Schütz and his contemporaries, J.S. Bach, Felix Mendelssohn, Johannes Brahms and Bruckner, right up to Arnold Schoenberg and Martin), achieving a high degree of artistic mastery despite being limited to minimal rehearsal times. In addition to this, the Thüringischer Akademischer Singkreis was one of the few ensembles in the GDR able to survive without any institutional connection. The fact that the choirmaster and some of the male voices hailed from the Dresden Kreuzkirche choir led by Rudolph Mauersberger was not without its influence upon the sound concept the choir aimed toward.
Its orientation around this great choral tradition was in large part responsible for the prominent position the Thüringischer Akademischer Singkreis very soon took among German chamber choirs, the ensemble's concerts - in the Dresden Kreuzkirche, the Thomaskirche, the Leipzig Gewandhaus and the Schauspielhaus in Berlin, to name a few of their venues - invariably being enthusiastically received Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, tours of the western parts of Germany and abroad and participation in international music festivals have extended the choir's activities Artists such as Peter Schreier and Ludwig Güttler have repeatedly enlisted its services for their public performances and CD recordings An instance of this is the decisive part played by the choir in the recording project "Music of the Dresden Hofkapelle".
Several CD recordings under the direction of Wolfgang Unger (on the Thorofon Classics label) likewise demonstrate the choir's high artistic standard (We would like to draw to your notice the "Festliches Reformationskonzert" in the series ‘Thuringia Cantat’, with sacred vocal and choral compositions from Thuringia with texts by Martin Luther, which was produced in 1992 on the occasion of the 475th anniversary of the Reformation, and also to the premiere recording of Rudolph Mauersberger's St Luke Passion). |
