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Music

Beethoven in Mumbai

June 22, 2019

It’s an unusual encounter with astonishing results: Months ago, young musicians from Germany and India set out in search of common ground in Indian and Western classical music. Here is what they found.

https://p.dw.com/p/364kX

The Campus Project, a joint undertaking by Deutsche Welle and Bonn’s Beethoven Festival, has been bringing talented young musicians together since 2001. This year, the Western musical universe met the Indian one. As a prelude, ten young music students from Germany and India explored common ground in a workshop in Mumbai.

Indien Campus Mumbai
The composers Bernhard Schimpelsberger & Rakesh ChaurasiaImage: DW/A. Boutsko

They were accompanied by the composers Bernhard Schimpelsberger and Rakesch Chaurasia, who wrote the piece commissioned by DW this year. It's a unique project that breaks down cultural barriers and fuses rhythms and melodies from each continent to create a whole new soundscape. "My musical world has been turned completely upside down", Charlotte Hahn remarked during rehearsals. She, like her four fellow German students, is learning classical percussion. Her Indian counterparts play traditional Indian instruments: like the djembe and the tabla. There are also two traditional dancers to round off the ensemble. Arts.21 visited the workshop in India, and met the musicians once again when they came to Bonn. Now, the Campus Project has culminated in a highly acclaimed concert with the German National Youth Orchestra.