New management for the Leipzig Bach Archive
Sir John Eliot Gardiner is to become President of the Leipzig Bach Archive Foundation, Peter Wollny Director. The retiring Zurich Tonhalle Artistic Director Elmar Weingarten will remain part of the Artistic Directorate.
The position of Foundation President will be newly created at the beginning of 2014 "in order to emphasize and further develop the leading international role of the Bach Archive", as the Bach Archive writes in its official press release.
Peter Wollny will succeed Christoph Wolff in the position of director. Wolff has been Director of the Bach Archive since 2001 and will leave office at the end of 2013 for personal reasons. The official election of the new Bach Archive management is scheduled for October 2013.
Wollny, who completed his doctorate under Wolff at Harvard University in 1993 and habilitated at the University of Leipzig in 2009, is regarded as one of the leading Bach researchers.
As managing director of the Bach Archive's now three-member board, Dettloff Schwerdtfeger will continue to support the work of the president and the director on an equal footing. As part of the expansion of the board, Schwerdtfeger will take on the role of Managing Director of the Leipzig Bach Festival.
The Managing Director will chair the meetings of the Artistic Directorate, which will continue to be made up of the Thomaskantor Georg Christoph Biller, the new Director of the Bach Archive Peter Wollny and Elmar Weingarten.
