Music in the Audimax

Under the banner ‘Inspired – International Young Master Pianists in Concert’, scholarship holders from the Elfrun Gabriel Foundation presented a virtuoso piano programme in the Audimax on 24 October 2025. The performers were Samuel Choi and Jiyoung Kim from the ‘Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’ University of Music and Theatre in Leipzig.

Samuel Choi, already an internationally recognised pianist, opened the concert with J. S. Bach’s Partita No. 5. This was followed by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’s *Variations sérieuses*, a serious and suspenseful set of variations. Samuel Choi’s performance concluded to rapturous applause with Frédéric Chopin’s Scherzo No. 4.

On 1 July 2025, the Academic Orchestra hosted a varied and sophisticated summer concert. The programme brought together three significant composers from different eras and countries. Under the baton of Pamela Mayorga, the audience enjoyed an inspiring evening of music, ranging from Baroque mythology through Bohemian Romanticism to late Scandinavian Romanticism.

The concert opened with Beethoven’s Overture to *The Creatures of Prometheus*, a work that brought the mythological story of the Titan Prometheus to life through music. Following this spectacular opening, the orchestra performed the four-movement Serenade, Op. 6, by the Czech composer Josef Suk, and concluded with the rarely performed Symphony No. 2 in A minor by the Swedish composer Elfrida Andrée.

Under the theme “A Mexican Night”, the Academic Orchestra performed a very special Mexican programme on 29 January 2025 in collaboration with the TU Ilmenau Chamber Choir, the Bach Choir and the “Monte Giardino” Choir, conducted by Pamela R. Mayorga. The conductor had selected music from her homeland for the concert – partly to express her gratitude for the warm welcome she had received in Germany and at the Technical University of Ilmenau.

Among the guests in the Audimax, which was filled to capacity, were Mayor Beate Misch and CDU Member of the State Parliament Andreas Bühl. TU President Prof. Kai-Uwe Sattler used the festive occasion to take stock of the work carried out in 2024, bid farewell to four professors as they retired, and offer a brief outlook on university life in 2025.