2006 World Equestrian Games

World Equestrian Games Opening Ceremony: Additional Information

June 23, 2006

For the first time in the World Equestrian Games history, the 2006 World Equestrian Games Openings Ceremony will be supported live by a 100 piece Symphony Orchestra; the Aachen Symphoniker, led by conductor Marcus Bosch. The music has been composed and arranged by Dutch composers' duo Cees Slings and Victor Kerkhof.

Eurodressage has the scoop to reveal to its reader additional info about the fantastic opening ceremony that is going to take place at the 2006 World Equestrian Games in Aachen, Germany.

WEG 2006 : Technical & Musical team

"Doing a project like this is definitely not just Vic and me, it is really a team effort," said Slings, "we couldn’t do it without great help and knowledge of Henk and Marleen Huizinga as our score supervisors and helping us out with the arrangements, they are the best you can have and we’ve been working with them for over 20 years. With the Aachen Symphoniker 'own' orchestral engineers Olav Mielke and Moritz Bergfeld our technical team was completed and, of course, the good harmony between this team and orchestral manager Hendrik Schroder and conductor Marcus Bosch is a ‘must’ in productions like this."

WEG 2006: The Music

The Slings & Kerkhof WEG music will be recorded in the studios of the "Aachener Stadtstheater" with the excellent Aachen Symphony musicians, led by conductor Marcus Bosch. The Symphony Orchestra will be played live via video footage during the ceremony.

From the tensioned ‘Countdown’, followed by powerful Invasion of the Horses, the music will slide into the joyful spiritual and spectacular building of the 2006 WEG Logo, ending the first 40 minutes of the ceremony into The Landgestuts Quadrille of Germany, who will be performing a quadrille to music with 64 horses and of which the choreography has been done by Sacha Eckjans of the German FN.

A solo riding Amazon will enter the arena introducing this Quadrille and recites a dramatic poem that depicts the atmosphere and message of the entire ceremony of horses, riders and music and the love between.

The first part will be in four separate arena’s of 20 x 60 meters, after that the four groups of 16 riders will unite into a 64 horses quadrille (a world-record) in one big arena of 100 x 40 meters. The music is an arrangement of various Mozart pieces, as 2006 is the Mozart year, starting with the well know Horn concerto and ending with highlights of Figaro.

Furthermore, Slings & Kerkhof, who were also the men behind the CHIO Aachen leader made in 2000, composed a new WEG leader, in various time length’s and in a short Fanfare which will be heard all over the premises to announce, for instance, the beginning of the competition.

This new WEG fanfare will be introduced during this ceremony too, in a special procession.

A complete new piece of music is arranged for the Famous Olympic Quadrille, though still based on the original choreography from 1918, starring Germany’s top Olympic dresssage riders all together. This Olympic Quadrille is planned to be performed during the ‘dressage week’, but still possible to get a deserved place in the Openings ceremony too.

Related Links
2006 WEG Aachen to Feature Grand Opening Ceremony
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