As today is Sunday - and the half-way point of the trip - I didn't set the alarm last night and had a lie-in until 07:00. But there's work to be done, so after breakfast I spent time writing the last blog post before heading off on foot in my posher togs for the nearby Mendelssohn-Haus.
The apartment where Felix Mendelssohn lived for the last few years of his short life was an unexpected highlight of my last visit to Leipzig, but I wasn't here on a Sunday when there is an 11:00 a.m. concert. This time I'd booked in advance, for a programme of piano music by Carl Maria von Weber and others, accompanied by readings from Weber's letters home to his wife when he was travelling to London and Vienna during his last thee years.
Sadly I didn't understand much of the German, but the music was superb and sounded wonderful on a modern copy of Mendelssohn's piano, in the salon where so many of his contemporaries joined him to make music. The 46 of us were arranged in a semicircle around the piano and the husband and wife letter-readers, and the whole performance was excellent.
After chatting for a while to some fellow travellers, I went home to change into my touring clothes, then walked the shorter distance to the Schumann-Haus (at last!) where Robert and Clara lived very happily for the first four years of their married life. It's smaller than the Mendelssohn-Haus, and some of the rooms are now used for other purposes, but a lot of interesting information is squeezed into the space.
I should have been at the Schumann-Haus on Friday but was delayed by interesting things in the printing museum, so today I was running late for my next visit: the Museum für Angewandte Kunst (Museum of Applied Art) and the Museum of Musical Instruments, both part of the Grassi Museum complex.
The Museum of Applied Art covers 2,500 years of art history, from ancient China, Iran, Turkey and Japan, and I've heard it described as one of the richest collections of it's type in Europe. Currently it finishes around the end of the 19th century; the section 'Art Nouveau to the Present Day' is due to open by the end of this year.
It is beautifully and perfectly arranged and displayed, the best museum I've ever seen, I'm sure, and there is a real 'Wow!' moment round every corner. I paid extra for a photo pass and took plenty of pictures; they will not be good due to reflections in the glass cases and other technical difficulties, but will be a good memory. I was aware of the time and moving fast, but stayed for two hours.
The to the Musical Instrument Museum for another hour. It starts with clavichords in the Renaissance, and goes on from there. The display not as dramatic as the applied art museum, but many familiar and not-so-familiar instruments. And some that didn't make it: I was attracted by the travelling harpsichord in three hinged sections, and the triple clavichord with two manuals and a footboard.
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