Simon Reichert - Wo läufst du hin? (2019)

"Where are you going, heaven is in you: Do you seek God elsewhere, you miss him for and for." Two lines from the immense work of the baroque mystic Angelus Silesius inspired the composer Jan Roelof Wolthuis to his seven-part song cycle for baritone and organ , and thus was the motto, after the organist Simon Reichert and the baritone Christopher Jung have put together their joint program.

Embedded in the small, substantial catalog of organ works that Johannes Brahms wrote in his young and late years, the songs connected here afford many a surprising insight: that a hypersensitive human child hid behind Max Reger's rough-polyphonic façade; that New Music, as demonstrated by Tilo Medek, who died in 2006, can certainly do enriching effects; and that the poetic concentration of a nearly four hundred-year-old god-seeker, brought to justice, has not lost its validity to this day.

This music continues ... Concert exams with distinction, nomination as »Best Newcomer« by the opera world, awards and prizes: The baritone Christopher Jung joined Helga Forner at the conservatories in Berlin and Leipzig as well as in the master classes of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Aribert Reimann prepared excellently for his international concert activity, in whose center today the romantic songs stands.

Born in 1980 in Gütersloh, Simon Reichert studied church music, organ and historical performance practice in Detmold and Basel and is a prizewinner of international organ competitions (including the Grand Prix d'ECHO Freiberg 2014). After working as a church musician in Germany, Switzerland and Denmark, he has been District Cantor of the Protestant Deanery Neustadt an der Weinstraße since 2009.