Art And Culture On the Elbe River

The blog might also be called Hamburg 3, although the numbering is not conclusive concerning my frequent stays in the Hanseatic city. Hamburg 2 refers to my trip on Sylvester 2019, but after that, I was in Hamburg for my class reunion in 2021, for the first alumni meeting at the GOA in June, and for the Christmas Market in December of 2022. I abandoned the numbering and named this blog according to the trip's motto Kunst und Kultur an der Elbe.

To say it right away, this trip to Hamburg with the Badische Zeitung was the best of all so far.

The Westin's reception and coffee bar are at the height of the visitors' gallery
on top of the old storage building and running around the building.

Although we only traveled second class on the ICE from Freiburg to Hamburg this time, the Westin Hotel in the Elbphilharmonie building already topped everything I had experienced so far.

The room and bed were huge, and there was a direct view into the wet room, which could be covered by a blind.

On the other hand, with the nice weather, the view of the Hamburg church towers was simply breathtaking.

Of course, this arrival had to be celebrated, so I headed to the coffee bar in the early afternoon and ordered as a late lunch snack "Champagne meets brioche," the latter filled with North Sea crab. Outside, people passed on the visitors' gallery running around the Elphi, occasionally casting a furtive glance at the guests in the coffee bar.

View on the Elbe River from the visitors' gallery (©RW)

As you may remember, the Elphi is at the fringe of Hamburg's old Speicherstadt (warehouse complex), which is - adding new buildings - transformed into a new quarter called Hafencity (Harbor City).

  

Look from the Speicherstadt to the "old" city with Der Michel.
 The St. Michaelis Church is actually located in the part of town called Neustadt (new city)

Refurbished old Speicher (warehouses)

The harbor areas were abandoned when container shipping replaced general cargo shipping. The old buildings are an integral part of Hamburg's Hafencity.

During our visit to the new part of the Harbor City, the tide was out

Construction is going on near the Marco Polo Terrace

The tide is creeping in

When ships want to enter the Harbor City, the road bridge is raised

During the traditional harbor tour, the motorboat captain explained the changeover from cargo to container shipping.

      

Giant cranes are ready to handle those shipping containers

The Chinese company Cosco Shipping owns 25% of Hamburg's container terminals

Inland shipping on the Elbe. The former Hamburg landmark,
the steeple of St. Michaelis greets all professional and landlubber sailors

On our way back, we passed Hamburg's new landmark in all its beauty

Red Baron will deal with two highlights in separate blogs. The Hamburg Trilogy will comprise the Concert at the Elbphilharmonie and the visit to the Hamburger Kunsthalle.

  

Follows our visit to the Komponisten Quartier. This is supposed to become a new Hamburg tourist attraction on Peter Street, with houses reconstructed in the old brick and timber framing style.

Here the musicians correlated to Hamburg are lined up. Judge yourself on the relationship these composers have with the Hanseatic city:

Georg Philipp Telemann, born in 1681, came to Hamburg in 1721 as Kantor of the Johanneum Lateinschule and music director of the five large churches.

He was successful not only as a composer but also as an entrepreneur in music. He died in 1767 and was followed by his godson Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, born in 1714, the second son of Johann Sebastian Bach.

After protracted negotiations, the Prussian court relinquished Bach's position as court composer in Berlin so he could become Kapellmeister (director of music) in Hamburg in 1768.

Carl Philipp Emmanuel,
in negotiations with the Head Pastor of St. Michaelis

In Hamburg, Bach began to turn his energies to ecclesiastical and choral music. The job required steady music production for Protestant church services at the Michaeliskirche (Church of St. Michael) and elsewhere in Hamburg.

CFEB's tomb slab in St Michaelis. The photo was taken in 2016

Carl Philip Emanuel Bach died in Hamburg in 1788.

Johann Adolph Hasse was baptized in Bergedorf near Hamburg on 25 March 1699. In the Hamburg suburb, his family members had been church organists for three generations. Hasse's career began in singing when he joined the Hamburg Oper am Gänsemarkt in 1718 as a tenor.

He left Germany in 1722, worked as a singer and composer, married soprano Faustina Bordoni, and died in Venice in 1783.

The composer Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy was born in Hamburg in 1809. His father moved the family to Berlin in 1811, when Hamburg became a French city under Napoleon.

Carl Friedrich Zelter Mendelsohn's musical teacher introduced the 12-year-old Felix to his friend Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (then in his seventies). In the following conversation, Goethe said,

"Musical prodigies ... are probably no longer so rare, but what this little man can do in extemporizing and playing at sight borders the miraculous, and I could not have believed it possible at so early an age.
"And yet you heard Mozart in his seventh year at Frankfurt," said Zelter.
"Yes," answered Goethe, "... but what your pupil already accomplishes bears the same relation to the Mozart of that time that the cultivated talk of a grown-up person bears to the prattle of a child."

Felix Mendelsohn died in Berlin in 1847.

Mendelsohn's older sister Fanny was born in 1805. She was a composer and pianist of the early Romantic era. Her extensive compositions, sometimes attributed to her brother, went unpublished in her lifetime.

In a letter to her, her father determined, "Music may become a profession for him Felix, while for you it can and should always only be an adornment, always a means of education, the basic bass of your being and doing. For him, therefore, ambition, eagerness to assert himself in a matter that seems important to him because he feels called upon to do so, is more likely to be looked up to, while you are perhaps no less honored that you have always shown yourself to be good-natured and reasonable in these cases and have proven by your joy in the applause that he has earned that you would also be able to earn it in his place. Persevere in this disposition and conduct. You are feminine, and only femininity adorns and rewards women."

Fanny, married Hensel, died in 1847, the same year as her brother.

Johannes Brahms was a composer, pianist, and conductor of the mid-Romantic period. Born in Hamburg in 1833 into a Lutheran family, he spent much of his professional life in Vienna.

 

In fact, he failed to get a good position in Hamburg and eventually was appointed conductor of the Wiener Singakademie in 1863.

Brahm in Vienne

In 1889, Hamburg made his "lost son" an honorary citizen. Brahms died in Vienna in 1897.

Hamburg around 1880 (Click to enlarge).
Note the new and present town hall was only started in 1886.

Gustav Mahler, born in 1860, was an Austro-Bohemian Romantic composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation.

Gustav Mahler in Hamburg

In 1891 Mahler took the post of chief conductor in Hamburg. But his aim was an appointment in the Austrian capital. Through his pragmatic conversion to Catholicism in 1897, Mahler eventually became director of the Wiener Hofoper. He died in Vienna in 1911.

The Olympus of Composers at the Brahms Museum

The day ended with a visit and tour of the Swedish church, once meant to be a spiritual sanctuary for Swedish sailors. King Gustaf Adolf defending the Lutheran faith in the Thirty Years' War on German territory, fell in the Battle of Lützen. 

We listened to a longish introduction into the church's history interrupted by Swedish music interpretations on the orgue and the piano.

We were tired and happy to find our car in the twilight near the Landungsbrücken (jetties). The dial is not a clock, but the tower shows the tide in Hamburg harbor. To follow ...

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