Sinfonia à 6

This short «Sinfonia à 6» in D (Allegro - Grave - Presto) for two horns, strings and b.c. (completed and edited by Kirill Karabits) displays the technical skills and creative musical imagination of Johann Gottlieb Graun.

Until 1943 the original manuscripts and prints of the work being proposed here were housed in the library-archives of the “Singakademie zu Berlin” the venerable choir society founded in 1791 by Carl Friedrich Christian Fasch.

When the Allied bombing of Berlin began in 1943, a large segment of the Sing-Akademie archives was moved to the Ullersdorf Castle near Glatz, close to Breslau (Polish Wroclaw) in Silesia, for safekeeping. Following the end of the Second World War in the Western world the collection was presumed lost until its’ “rediscovery” by a group of musicologists from Harvard University in 1999.

In 1945, according to legend, a collection of 5170 items was saved by Ukrainian (Soviet) Solders in Poland and brought to Kiev, where it was stored in the National Tchaikovsky music Academy of Ukraine and then later transfered to the Central State Archive for Literature and Art of Ukraine.

In November 2001, pursuant to a formal act of restitution signed by Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, the archives were returned to Germany, and they are presently stored in the Preussischen Kulturbesitz in Berlin.