No stage, no audience, the level of excitement lower than usual. A rather untypical situation just before a performance, but this was not the Christmas concert traditionally held in Salem’s Zehntscheuer. For us students, however, that was no reason to not get into the Christmas spirit and share it with the whole Salem community far beyond the castle’s boundaries.

Therefore, we members of the Junior Orchestra, rehearsed the Christmas songs “Alle Jahre wieder” and “O du fröhliche” on three Saturday afternoons in Advent. The violinists, the cellist and two pianists are all students of Years 5 to 10. We had fun together, even while wearing masks and frequently opening windows to air the room, in preparing ourselves for the video recording which our music teacher Tiloudin Anjarwalla organised. The motivativing lightness of our instrumental teacher and director, Susanne Sigg, helped us all to become adjusted to this new situation. She supported the string players with additional help during their regular music lessons and other helpful students came to her assistance.

After the recording session we received our applause despite performing in a virtual space – from Ms. Sigg, Mr. Anjarwalla and our fellow students. And then came the many compliments from our teachers and parents who watched and listened to our video message. We even detected tears in the corners of the eyes our proud mentors. Here is the link to the video, which also included musical Christmas greetings from students of Years 11 and 12, as well as members of Salem Kolleg: https://youtu.be/LuZMZG4tHX0

Ariane Hellenbach, 10D1