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Berlin (dpa) - Classical music scores by some of Germany's leading composers - which were seized by the victorious Soviet Red Army after World War II - will be performed Saturday for the first time since the 18th century, say directors of Berlin's Sing Akademie.
The Sing Akademie (academy of vocal music), created in 1791 as Europe's first mixed male and female choir, amassed one of the greatest collections of original music from composers including the Bach family, Georg Philipp Telemann, Antonio Vivaldi and Felix Mendelssohn.
Long believed to have been destroyed in the 1945 battle for Berlin, part of the archive was discovered in Kiev where it had been taken as war booty by the Soviet Union.
More than 5,000 musical compositions from the 18th century were returned to the Sing Akademie in 2001. Hundreds of the works have never been performed since they were composed over 200 years ago, said Sing Akademie chairman Georg Graf zu Castell-Castell.
The archive from the 19th century, including Mendelssohn's compositions, is still missing and believed to be in Moscow, said Castell-Castell. Russia has refused to return most cultural works seized from Germany during the war.
"We are still searching for it," he added.
Musicologists funded by the Packard Humanities Institute in the US have catalogued about half the returned archive. The last incomplete catalogue of the works was compiled back in 1832.
"It's very exciting - we are finding things we never suspected," says Castell-Castell. Vivaldi's lost opera Motezuma has been one of the surprise finds.
Unknown works from Carl-Philipp Emanuel Bach and Christian Friedemann Bach have also been discovered in the archive. The collection includes works from lesser-known ancestors of Johann Sebastian Bach, the so-called Alt-Bach'sche Archiv.
Works by many German composers from the era of Prussian King Friedrich the Great are in the collection and Castell-Castell does not rule out that lost compositions by the flute-playing, music- loving king may also turn up.
Among works to be performed Saturday are a sonata by Telemann using the handwritten score by the composer.
"The musicians had some difficulties reading the notes at first," said Kai-Uwe Jirka who is the Sing Akademie's artistic director, adding: "But they figured it out pretty quickly and you can understand so much more about what the composer intended with the original score."
A vocal work by the lesser known composer J S Carl Possin will also be performed. Sing Akademie spokesman Christian Filips said it was believed this work had not been sung since it was first composed in 1760 - if at all.
"Possin is in the process of being rediscovered," said Filips.
The Sing Akademie does not plan to adopt the big concert principle which has been a dominant style for the past century, said Jirka.
Instead, it plans to go back to its roots and focus on smaller performances.
It aims to reach three key groups, stressed Jurka: the lay public which it wants to encourage to join its traditional choir comprised of non-professionals; children through its sponsorship of youth choirs in Berlin including the famous Berlin cathedral boys choir; and music academics.
Taking the opposite approach to the Soviet Union, which hid the musical treasures in a vault for almost 60 years, the Sing Akademie is determined to make its holdings totally transparent.
The entire collection is being microfilmed and will be published by Munich's K G Sauer Verlag. The Bach and Telemann collections have already been brought out and more are due to follow. For more details, see www.sing-akademie.de
Copyright 2006 dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH
