06/04/2021
We are delighted to announce that the first elected Glenn Gould Bach Fellow for 2021-2023 is renowned cellist Tanja Tetzlaff.
Last summer, the GLENN GOULD BACH FELLOWSHIP was presented to the public, with Founding Fellow. Peter Tuite. Every two years, the City of Weimar will now award this fellowship, which offers musicians the chance to realize ambitious and innovative musical media projects on the music of Bach or on music from the Baroque period. The Glenn Gould Bach Fellowship is made possible by the Philip Loubser Foundation and managed by the Thuringia Bach Festival.
The first elected recipient of the Fellowship awarded by the City of Weimar has now been chosen: Cellist Tanja Tetzlaff, born in Hamburg in 1973, convinced the selection panel both with her artistic work as well as with her project proposal. Starting this April, over the next two years, she will now have the opportunity to realise a film project that relates Bach's famous cello suites to nature and climate change. In addition to her concert activities, Tetzlaff has long been involved with environmental issues – and can now combine the two with this wholly unique project.
"I am very honoured to have been selected as the Glenn Gould Bach Fellow 2021," Tanja said in a first reaction. "The fellowship will allow me to realise a real dream project that combines two aspects that have kept me very busy over the past years."
Tanja Tetzlaff was selected last December from a large number of applications. The selection panel included the Weimar cultural director, Julia Miehe, concert pianist and conductor Lars Vogt, impresario Sonia Simmenauer, the Director of the Royal College of Music, Colin Lawson, and the patron Michael Loubser, representing the Philip Loubser Foundation. The Glenn Gould Bach Fellowship is endowed with 100,000 Euros annually for the fellows as well as for their project budget.
Cellist Tanja Tetzlaff has been a defining musician of her generation for decades, both as a soloist and as a chamber musician. Over the course of her career, she has performed as a soloist with Daniel Harding, Philippe Herreweghe and Sir Roger Norrington, among others. Her particular trademark is an extraordinarily broad repertoire, including above all compositions of the 20th and 21st centuries. Tanja Tetzlaff studied with Heinrich Schiff at the Mozarteum Salzburg, among others.
With the award of the Fellowship, the City of Weimar once again has the chance to add value to its great musical legacy. More than almost any other composer, JS Bach has shown us how our lives, even in difficult times, have a dimension that goes beyond the earthly. This is what makes the music so comforting where it expresses pain, and so heaven-storming where it rejoices.
