Extract from :
My Time in Kassel December 2001 – September 2002
By Hugh Waldock
Concert with the Theme; Culinary Delights
This is the programme from the concert that my friend. It was a mini concert which I still have the CD from. It included Schumann and the singing of several rounds, folk songs and works by contemporary composers all with the theme of food and drink. I enjoyed it so much I joined the choir myself to sing with them.
I was introduced to them by my friends from Inlingua,
my then former place of work by American
Steve and German Sue. They were the Kassel University Choir in the
music department of the Gesamthochschule Kassel (GhK
for short) or Kassel Polytechnic University
as Susanne was a music student there.
She studied music with German on a specialist teaching
degree for German grammar schools. In her penultimate
term Steve invited me to go along to the Culinary
Delights concert. It was under the direction of a former piano
student at Lübeck Conservatoire called Charlotte Hake.
Charlotte had completed a performance degree, but
wanted to get more quality into teaching music in
German schools. The choir were responsible for
performing a number of shorter pieces rather than full
scale oratorios and operettas as in a concert choir. Some
of the pieces I did with them like An Ant’s Journey or
Armeisenreise and Plenty Good Room on the Glory Train
were written with pedagogy in mind were linked by a common theme of travel
to make up the programme. They were playful pieces to introduce the
students to the traditional choral singing which they had
previously thought rather old-fashioned Ave, Maris
Stella by Grieg was a good example of such a piece.