It is our pride and honour to be able to present you today with the first official and much-awaited brochure of the "Sergiu Celibidache Stiftung". This is not intended as a pompous statement, it simply unites the international team and the first faithful partners and artists, symbolising the true beginning of an ambitious and necessary project.

From the original idea back in 1997 to its first concrete activities in1999, it has taken us more than two years; two years of planning and brainstorming between family, advisers and friends. And since then, we needed almost another two years to proudly present to you the concrete plans of the Sergiu Celibidache Stiftung.

Away from critics´ pressure and general scepticism, we have built and nourished our plans to give them a real chance to grow with time. Today, we finally know that the first "Sergiu Celibidache Festival" will take place in Munich in 2002.

Thanks to the many renowned musicians who have immediately shown support for the project, thanks to the various projects we have patiently put in place internationally, thanks to the international team who have always given their best in the daily requirements, we are finally able to bring to you the beginning of a long story.

A story we believe Celi himself would be proud of.

Ioana Celebidachi                       Serge Celebidachi
It is a great pleasure for me to present the purpose, tasks and aims of the "Sergiu Celibidache Stiftung" to the public for the first time ­ together with Ioana and Serge Celebidachi. The instructions which Sergiu Celibidache, the conductor and teacher, philosopher and educator of orchestras, the composer and uncompromising fighter for a real humanity in our being has left behind are simply magnificent. The foundation wants to serve his heritage by recording and documenting the life´s work of "Celi" ­ as he was tenderly called by the people of Munich. Another special task will be handing down and making present his "Phenomenology of Music". His dedication to this subject lasted more than half a century and he teached generations of pupils, always under the slogan that "teaching is the highest human activity".

The "Sergiu Celibidache Stiftung" is in its infancy. But thanks to the generous and far-sighted initiative of Professor Dr. Hellmuth Matiasek it does not stand alone: it has found a home in the rooms of and in its relationship with the Bavarian Theaterakademie August Everding. With the "Sergiu Celibidache Festival" 2002 it has a platform at the Prinzregententheater for its musical projects and it enjoys the help of partners for the first time. The foundation is supported in all its activities by the artists of the board of curators who, all together, immediately showed their willingness to work, in livid memory of him, on the musical and human heritage of Sergiu Celibidache.

The foundation will be the centre of the worldwide network of impulses which Celibidache had given birth to by his complex and untiring activities. Everyone is invited to cooperate in the development of this network, thus making it possible for the impulses to create a "musical", even a "symphonical" 21th century.

There is so much to discover ­ everything is there!

In this sense I am looking forward to everything to come and wish the foundation an organic and healthy growth "on the existing fertile ground".

Mark Mast
Intendant of the Sergiu Celibidache Stiftung

On June 18th 1980 Serge Celibidachi, accompanied by his parents Ioana and Sergiu Celibidache, submitts a cheque to Mrs. Dr. Veronika Carstens in favour of UNICEF on the occasion of the record presentation "Taschengarten". This gesture represents a first symbol of the formation of the Sergiu Celibidache Foundation.