Con spirito – Chamber Music Festival Leipzig

Experience music in the authentic places where it was created and embark on a journey to the European cultural heritage sites, the salons and places where Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Johann Sebastian Bach, Richard Wagner, Clara and Robert Schumann and many other artists worked.

What do the Jewish influences in music sound like? To mark the "Tacheles - Jewish Culture in Saxony" theme year, CON SPIRITO will be tracing the "Jewish Tunes of Leipzig's Romantics" from September 12 to 20, 2026. Stars of the international chamber music scene such as Thorsten Johanns (clarinet), Antje Weithaas and Tobias Feldmann (violin), Oliver Triendl (piano), the artistic director of the festival Peter Bruns and Yibai Chen (cello), the Amsterdam Klezmer Band and other top-class artists will perform in Leipzig's salons and places of activity of Mendelssohn, Bach, the Schumanns, Grieg and Wagner.

In the sixth festival season of CON SPIRITO, organized by the Schumann-Verein Leipzig e. V., friendships between the Schumanns and the Mendelssohns, Joseph Joachim, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Heinrich Heine, Ferdinand Hiller and Ferdinand David become audible. Richard Wagner also comes into focus with his youthful enthusiasm for Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Giacomo Meyerbeer, which later turned into the opposite.

CON SPIRITO 2026 will open on September 12 in the Mendelssohn Hall of the Gewandhaus in Leipzig. Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy's String Octet op. 20, the Piano Trio op. 40 by Carl Frühling and Ignaz Moscheles' arrangement of Beethoven's Egmont Overture will be performed. The Amsterdam Klezmer Band, one of the leading ensembles on the klezmer scene, will be performing in the Thomaskirche (17.09.). It will provide a powerful dose of klezmer, infused with jazz, Balkan rhythms, gypsy influences and a good dose of contemporary energy.

CON SPIRITO takes place annually in September in Leipzig's European cultural heritage sites: Alte Nikolaischule, Bach Museum, Gewandhaus, Grieg Meeting Place, Leipzig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Academy of Music and Theater, Mendelssohn House, Schumann House and St. Thomas Church.