Jugend Musiziert, Germany's most popular competition for young musicians is taking place online this year due to the restrictions imposed by Covid-19.

Participants from all over Germany will send in their video musical entries for a national jury to decide upon, and amongst participants this year will be students from the KLANGwelt orchestra school.

Notable

However, what is notable is that entries for the competition are usually from the orchestral sphere, although this year has seen a number of brass band entries, including a trio of players studying for several years in the KLANGwelt Orchestra School of the Blasmusikverein Carl Zeiss Jena e.V.

Two of them — Teresa Fischer (tenor horn) and Johannes Stoll (cornet/soprano cornet) alongside their orchestral colleague Gustav Nitsche (trumpet) play with Jugend Brass Band BlechKLANG as well as representing Germany as part of the 2019 European Youth Brass Band.

Excited

Alexander Richter, Artistic Director of the Competence Centre and conductor of Brass Band BlechKLANG, has helped prepare the trio for their submissions, and told 4BR: "Covid-19 has presented us with major problems but we have been able to find creative solutions.

Both individual lessons with students and tutti rehearsals are done completely digitally, which has given us a way to continue making music together."

I'm very pleased that we will once again enrich the competition with the special timbres of our brass band instrumentsAlexander Richter

Pleased

He added: "I'm excited to see to what extent we can repeat our success from 2018 when Teresa was the first tenor horn player ever to reach the national competition and earned second place.

I'm very pleased that we will once again enrich the competition with the special timbres of our brass band instruments."