Stephan – from Germany to Slovenia

Stephan Lutermann visiting Helena Zupančič at St. Stanislav’s Institution in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in May 2019.

“In 2020 i’m planning to launch a new choir gymnasium system together with the diocese of Osnabrück at a school, which is in the center of Osnabrück. We started the preparations some months ago. During this prelimaries i already visited the Händel Gymnasium in Berlin and the „Christophorus Gymnasium Altensteig“, who already experienced the huge benefits of such a system and build up some excellent children and youth choirs.

Due to my contact to Helena Zupančič the idea to visit „St. Stanislav’s Institution“ in Ljubljana, Slovenia came up, to learn more from her and her collegues. Although the school system is slightly different to the German system there are a lot of things which are similar. The outstanding high level of the musical education and the breathtaking quality of all choirs makes „St. Stanislav’s Institutions“ a perfect model of a fruitfully choir system at a school.

I visited Ljubljana for three days from Tuesday to Friday and was able to watch almost every choir of the school. In addition to that, I was invited to visit a concert of three choirs and orchestra under the leadership of Damian Mocnic.

The schedule was packed but it was a great honour for me to see and hear all this different groups. All of them singing on a very high level.

Helena und Damian made my visit as pleasant as possible.Although they had to prepare the annual school concert with all choirs participating on Saturday the same week, they did everything to show and explain me as much as possible.

It was an extraordinary experience to visit „St. Stanislav’s Institutions“. My big big thank you goes to Helena Zupančič, who organized my visit and took so much of her precious time to show me around. In 2020 Helena will come to Germany as a follow up to my visit this year in Ljubljana.”

Stephan Lutermann