Free piano improvisations in baroque, classical and romantic style

Contributors

Program

"One also demands that a piano player should make fantasies of all kinds." For Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, free fantasizing, the spontaneous invention of music, was still a matter of course; today it has largely disappeared from classical concert life. The lecture recital takes up this almost lost historical practice: It is improvised in baroque, classical and romantic tonal language and incorporates suggestions from the audience. Through this form of "real-time composition", historical stylistic worlds are brought back to life and can be experienced anew as a contemporary form of artistic expression - and at the same time gain their own artistic character through individual interpretation.

Georg Thoma teaches music theory, aural training and improvisation at the music academies in Freiburg, Munich and Stuttgart, performs as a pianist and improviser and is doing his doctorate on historical improvisation practices. Further research interests include reduction-analytical approaches, historical music theories, extended tonality in the 20th century as well as touch and timing aspects in piano playing.

The event is part of the FZM lecture series "Improvising: Spontaneous Creativity in Art and Everyday Life".

In the summer semester 2026, the Freiburg Research and Teaching Center(FZM) is organizing a lecture series on the topic of improvisation from various specialist perspectives and facets. In addition to ten lectures by members of the FZM and guests, which will take place on Wednesdays in the lecture hall of the University's Musicology Department, events with improvisational-musical performances or cross-genre performances are planned on five Monday evenings at the College of Music, two of which are part of the FZM event series "musik + wissen".

Here you can find the brochure (pdf) (this file is not barrier-free) for the public lecture series with all individual dates.

The Freiburg Research and Teaching Center (FZM) is a joint institution of the College of Music and the University campus Freiburg with the aim of mutual networking in music-related research and teaching.