Jürgen Karthe (bandoneon), Carambolage Octet
Participants of the European Summer Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir 2025 from countries including Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, Ukraine and Germany will sing and perform.
The European Summer Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir 2025 is part of our Capital of Culture project "Moving Sounds - Concertina & Bandoneon". The invention of the concertina by Carl Friedrich Uhlig (1834) in Chemnitz is the cradle of the bandoneon in Chemnitz. To honour Carl Friedrich Uhlig and the Erzgebirge instrument makers who exported the bandoneon all over the world, we are telling this story in 2025 and bringing the Tango Argentino from Buenos Aires back to the Capital of Culture 2025 as a world cultural heritage with the bandoneon.
In our commissioned work Tango Pur!, the threads of instrumental history that stretch from the former textile industrial city of Chemnitz - the Saxon Manchester - into the world are interwoven with the concertina as the piano of the little man, the concertina workers' associations, the mixture of Latin American folklore with the songs and dances of migrants from Poland, Germany, Italy, Spain, Ireland and Portugal in the melting pot of immigrants in Buenos Aires to form the Tango Argentino. The legendary golden age, the salonability in Europe, the Finnish form and the revival by Astor Piazzolla are facets of a worldwide enthusiasm in which the bandoneon is the musical soul and the meeting of hearts can be experienced in dance.
