Lost Music Found

A Germany vocal academy is performing music seized by Russian soldiers at the end of World War II for the first time since the 18th century on Saturday.

Created in 1791, the Sing Akademie in Berlin was Europe's first mixed male and female choir, and it amassed one of the greatest collections of original music from composers including the Bach family, Georg Philipp Telemann, Antonio Vivaldi and Felix Mendelssohn.

Then World War II occurred and the Akademie's cultural treasures disappeared.

Long believed to have been destroyed in the 1945 battle for Berlin, part of the archive was discovered in 1999 in the Ukrainian city of Kiev where it had been taken as war booty by Soviet soldiers.

Returned works contain some surprises

More than 5,000 musical compositions from the 18th century were then returned to the Sing Akademie in 2001.

Sing Akademie chairman Georg Graf zu Castell-Castell said hundreds of the works have never been performed since they were composed over 200 years ago.

"It's very exciting -- we are finding things we never suspected," he said.

The lost opera "Motezuma" by the 17th century Venetian composer Vivaldi has been one of the surprise finds.

Unknown works from Carl-Philipp Emanuel Bach, one of eleven sons of famous German composer Johann Sebastian Bach, have also been discovered in the archive.

Part of the archives remain missing

The academy's archive from the 19th century, including Mendelssohn's compositions, is still missing, but are believed to be in Moscow.

"We are still searching for it," Castell-Castell said.

Among works to be performed on Saturday are a sonata by Georg Philipp Telemann, sung from the handwritten score by the German Baroque music composer.

"The musicians had some difficulties reading the notes at first," said Kai-Uwe Jirka who is the Sing Akademie's artistic director.

But he added that the musicians "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 was also performed. Sing Akademie spokesman Christian Filips said it was believed to be the first time the piece had been sung since it was first composed in 1760 -- if at all.

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 transparent, by publishing the entire collection on microfilm.