Günter Jena and Bertold Hummel met in Würzburg in 1963. At that time, the 30-year-old church musician had been cantor at the Protestant St Johannis Church for two years and had great ambitions to establish another Bavarian centre for the promotion of Bach’s music in Würzburg (following Munich and Ansbach). Hummel (cello) and his wife Inken (violin) had been at the heart of what would later become the St. Johannis Church Bach Orchestra since at least 1964. They performed with Jena (conductor and harpsichordist) in numerous cantata services, oratorio performances and chamber concerts. On 11 November 1966, the Johann Sebastian Bach Society of Würzburg e.V. is founded. Jena and Hummel are co-signatories of the charter. In 1971, at Jena’s suggestion, the Bach Society commissions a composition from Hummel. As part of the 5th Würzburg Bach Festival, his Metamorphoses on the name “B-A-C-H” for organ and wind instruments, Op. 40, was premiered in Würzburg Cathedral.
In 1974, Günter Jena is appointed Director of Church Music at the historic St Michael’s Church in Hamburg. For his newly established concert series “Music and Poetry”, he asks Hummel for two further compositions that engage with the well-known Christmas carols “Silent Night” and “O du fröhliche ”.
A loose, friendly contact never broke off. In October 2019 , Günter Jena wrote to Inken Hummel: “Many people I have met have enriched me in their own way. And so, in my memories of the Würzburg years, you and your husband inevitably come to life.” Without your energetic support in the orchestra, without your experienced advice on many occasions, and not least without your compositional help in honouring the name B-A-C-H or in making a stylistically not entirely flawless, but emotionally charged Christmas carol – the Hummels were always there to lend a helping hand! For all of this, I thank you from the bottom of my heart!

Biography

Günter Jena was born in Leipzig in 1933. After attending the Thomasschule there, he studied musicology, philosophy and psychology at the Free University in West Berlin, followed by church music and conducting at the Munich Academy of Music under Karl Richter, whose assistant he became. From 1961 to 1974 he was cantor at St John’s Church in Würzburg, where he founded the ‘Bachchor Würzburg’ and established the ‘Bachtage Würzburg’. The Würzburg City Council awarded him the Culture Prize. From 1974 to 1998, Jena was Director of Church Music at St Michael’s Church in Hamburg. There, with the “St. Michaelis Choir” (now the Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach Choir), he performed numerous concerts, focusing in particular on the great oratorios from Bach to Stravinsky. The focus of his work was the works of J.S. Bach, whose regular performances turned Hamburg into a “Mecca for Bach lovers” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung).

In addition to music, Jena’s interests lie in literature; in Hamburg, he created a music series entitled “Musik und Dichtung” (Music and Poetry) featuring renowned actors such as Elisabeth Flickenschild, Karl-Heinz Böhm, Will Quadflieg, Gert Westphal, Heinz Rühmann and others.

Günter Jena worked closely with the choreographer John Neumeier. In addition to other sacred ballets (Magnificat, Requiem, Messiah, Dona nobis pacem), this included, in particular, the 1981 choreography of the St Matthew Passion.

He conducted concerts and ballets in, among other places, Paris (Salle Pleyel, Théâtre du Châtelet, Opéra Garnier and Opéra Bastille); Avignon (Palais des Papes); Madrid (Teatro Real); Tokyo (NHK Hall, Bunka Kaikan, Hitomi Memorial Hall); Osaka (Festival Hall); Hiroshima (Yubin Chokin Kaikan); Berlin (Staatsoper); Dresden (Semper Oper); Stuttgart (State Opera), Ludwigshafen (Theater im Pfalzbau), Vienna (Musikverein, Museumsquartier), and Oberammergau (Passion Theatre). The ballet St Matthew Passion was also performed worldwide with a radio recording under his baton. Jena was a member and, until 1998, Vice-President of the Free Academy of Arts in Hamburg, which awarded him its medal. In recognition of his work, the Senate of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg conferred upon him the title of Professor as well as the Brahms Medal (Hamburg’s highest honour for active musicians). In recent years, Jena’s focus shifted from active music-making to lectures on music. He gave lectures and seminars in Bern, Stuttgart, Hanover, Hamburg (Free Academy of Arts, Evangelical Academy), Würzburg, Lindau (Congress of Depth Psychology). Jena wrote five books dealing with the works of J.S. Bach. After his retirement, he initially lived in Italy for 10 years and, from 2007 until his death in 2026, in the Black Forest.