Franz Wittenbrink

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Franz Wittenbrink (born August 25, 1948 in Bentheim ) is a German arranger , composer , conductor , director and pianist .

Life

Wittenbrink grew up as the sixth of thirteen children of a strictly Catholic building contractor family from Bad Bentheim; he is a nephew of Gertrud Goppel , the wife of the former Bavarian Prime Minister Alfons Goppel . His father was a CDU city councilor in Bad Bentheim. At the age of nine he joined the Regensburger Domspatzen music boarding school . There he received lessons in piano, violoncello, organ, trumpet, composition and counterpoint. He studied sociology in Mannheim and Heidelberg and was involved in the SDS ( Socialist German Student Union ), for which he was elected to the student parliament and the AStA of the University of Mannheim in 1969/70 . He was a co-founder of the KBW ( Kommunistischer Bund Westdeutschland ) in Heidelberg, for which he ran unsuccessfully in the federal election in the Mannheim I constituency in 1976 (with the professional title of driver ). After his exclusion from the KBW in 1981, apprenticeships as a piano maker and machine fitter as well as work as a garbage collector, truck driver and printer followed.

Only when he was over 30 did Wittenbrink return to music in the early 80s as a keyboardist in a band (soul, funk, reggae, jazz). From the piano stool of a bar to a theater, he became a composer, conductor, arranger, director, interpreter and musical director at the Nationaltheater Mannheim . This was followed by a lectureship in the opera class at the Mannheim / Heidelberg University of Music. Franz Wittenbrink then worked on music theater productions and recitals at various theaters, but mainly in Stuttgart and Basel. In the seasons 1993/94 to 1999/2000 Franz Wittenbrink was musical director at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg , where his collaboration with Herbert Wernicke had a great influence.

In March 2010, Franz Wittenbrink reported on the TV programs Menschen bei Maischberger and ML Mona Lisa about acts of abuse during his time with the Regensburger Domspatzen .

He lives and works in Hamburg as a freelance artist.

reception

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On the occasion of his “Integration Review” entitled “Welcome. A German evening "was the verdict of Die Zeit , Wittenbrink was showing a first-class performance as usual, but wrote the piece on Merkel's" We can do it "" very obviously "with" foaming at the mouth ":" So much foaming that he was entertaining, which he has mastered for twenty years with his proverbial 'Wittenbrink Evenings', has turned into a propaganda tool. "The play deliberately offers" theater against do-gooders and dismay, theater for people who fear foreign infiltration but do not want to be insulted as right-wing or even Nazis " and be the first musical for AfD supporters in Hamburg.

Working as a composer and arranger

  • Die Fledermaus (Director: Herbert Wernicke ) - complete score rewritten for a small ensemble (grand piano, string quartet, flute, clarinet, harmonium and percussion)
  • The Wedding of Don Alonso (Director: Herbert Wernicke ) - Processing of unknown Spanish operettas
  • Schumacher's Holiday - composed music
  • Mr. Puntila and his servant Matti (Director: Frank Castorf )
  • St. Pauli Saga - A Kiez-Revue (Director: Wilfried Minks ) - Tells the story of a Kiez-King from the end of the war until the 1960s
  • Die Fledermaus (Director: Frank Castorf ) - arrangement for two concert grand pianos and a jazz trumpet (as anti-Viennese concert instruments)
  • The Caucasian Chalk Circle (director: Stefan Bachmann ) - Wittenbrink persuaded the Brecht heirsto eliminatethe original music by Paul Dessau and to write a new one
  • The sinking of the Titanic (Director: Anselm Weber ) - music composed
  • Der Zigeunerbaron (Director: Herbert Wernicke ) - musical direction
  • Mahagonny - orchestral arrangement (elements from the song-play and from the opera), sung by actors
  • Two ties by Georg Kaiser and Mischa Spoliansky - new orchestral version
  • The corpse in the sack - opera persiflage by Franz Wittenbrink and Eberhard Streul - "a 'crime scene' 'about all unpunished operatic murders and Gilda never stops singing in the sack" - arrangement of opera quotes (in 2.5 minutes of overture alone there are 42 overtures and a fugue processed on the crime scene topic) - recording of the NDR
  • Ritter Eisenfraß by Jacques Offenbach - chamber orchestra version
  • A Summer Nights Dream (director: Franz Wittenbrink) - Shakespeare's “Midsummer Night's Dream” 2002 at the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence exclusively with Mozart quotes, arias and ensembles
  • Piano recital as a theater, since October 2007 at various venues (including in Nuremberg) - The story of two pianists, the function keys , which basically tell their own story: Both are actually looking for a man and these men will describe with their pieces ( Spanish, Russian music etc.). It ends with the fact that after a bottle of whiskey they play Rhapsody in Blue with four hands.
  • Parents (direction and musical direction: Franz Wittenbrink) - In a musical evening, Wittenbrink accompanies four young couples on their way to becoming parents.

Recital productions

  • Alone together , 1987 Staatstheater Stuttgart - an Édith Piaf / Judy Garland recital. Solo evening in which the actress jumped between characters
  • Strange I moved in, stranger I move out again , 1993 Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg - evening about the strangeness in my own country, both the fear of it and its attractiveness. The evening was supposed to show what “foreign” actually means
  • Moonstruck , 1994 Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg (with television recording) - is about the irritated behavior of people during a full moon
  • Secretaries , 1995 Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg - the everyday madness in an open-plan office
  • Come on, sweet death ... , 1996 Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg - This evening describes people on this side from the perspective of the hereafter that it's not that bad over there and that death is part of life anyway
  • About the seduction of angels in house entrances , 1996/97 Nationaltheater Mannheim , original version in 1991 at the Stadttheater Basel - a sad evening about the longing for great and lasting love and the futility of holding on
  • Men , 1997 Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg , 2006 reprocessing for the soccer World Cup as "Men '06" at the Schauspielhaus Hannover and the Münchner Kammerspiele - an evening about soccer and above all its viewers in all generations
  • Die Comedian Harmonists , 1997 Comedy on Kurfürstendamm , Berlin in collaboration with the copywriter Gottfried Greiffenhagen ; an original version was created as early as 1988 without Greiffenhagen, only based on a biography at the Staatstheater Stuttgart (was planned as a one-off event there, but was then played around 140 times) - a musical play about the vocal ensemble Comedian Harmonists
  • Because all lust wants eternity… , 1999 Salzburg Festival , new edition 2007 for the Münchner Kammerspiele and 09/2009 for the Staatsschauspiel Dresden and 2010 for the Schauspielhaus Graz - “A few women, in the prime of their youth, have a strange tendency: with songs from Pergolesi to Meredith Monk, from Schubert and Mozart to Kate Bush, Nina Hagen and the Beatles, they celebrate death as a strangely joyful festival, they dream and play it. " (Source: Hamburger Abendblatt )
  • Night shift , 2000 Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg (with television recording) - At night in the theater, when nobody is there and the porter has locked everything, the theater ghosts come out. (The audience sat here on the stage and the actors were distributed in the auditorium - that's why only 200 spectators were allowed into the performances)
  • Pompes Funèbres , 2000 Burgtheater Vienna - Two families in mourning trying to suppress death, two grave diggers (“disposers”) and others preparing for funeral in Vienna.
  • Miles and more , 2000 Schauspielhaus Hannover - An evening about travelers in an airplane, people in a confined space who have nothing to do with each other
  • Zigarren , 2001 Berliner Ensemble - An evening with music about power and sex, East and West, strange correspondences between seemingly opposites: “I see the cigar in Clinton's mouth, I see it in the mouth of the Chancellor, also with Bertolt Brecht and Heiner Müller , with Ludwig Erhard or Fidel Castro… The title “cigars” is basically an image that the actual impetus is power and not ideology, which is more interchangeable. ”(Franz Wittenbrink)
  • The world becomes more beautiful every day , 2001 Münchner Kammerspiele - On the occasion of an exhibition opening, the committed gallery owner, the courted patron, a celebrity group, the strenuous party animal and the young cultural provocateur meet
  • At the open heart , 2001 Schauspielhaus Hannover - A New Year's Eve in the emergency room
  • Mothers , 2002 Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus - the action takes place in a sandpit around which the mothers sit while their sons dig. The mothers are preoccupied with themselves, with their stories, worries, plans, and completely overlook the fact that these Sandeljungs are one day the men who become machos, around whom many of their thoughts and feelings revolve
  • Metamorphosen , 2003 Münchner Kammerspiele - The endlessly arguing couple in the rear building, the old woman who talks to the birds, the shabby little dealer and car dealer - all too familiar and all too familiar from the neighborhood. In this recital, the attraction of recognizing the supposedly foreign and the surprise at the transformation of the familiar into the unfamiliar play a major role: Mozart suddenly sounds rocky and Beatles songs become madrigals
  • Les Adieux , 2003 Hamburger Kammerspiele - An evening about saying goodbye and starting over in the waiting room of a train station
  • Brothers - Zur Sonne - Zur Freiheit , in 2004 first at the Ruhr Festival and then at the Schauspielhaus Hannover - this “workers' song evening” tells of the importance of the working class in the opposition and the bloodshed when they are in history (e.g. in China and Russia ) came to power
  • Mozart Werke Ges.mbH - Everything about Mozart! Mozart's work and Mozartkugeln , 2004 Burgtheater Vienna - A Salzburg tour guide shows a group of Japanese people taking photographs of the Mozartkugelfabrik
  • The color red - an evening about Bertolt Brecht , 2005 Berliner Ensemble - an evening about private life and Bertolt Brecht's women
  • No beautiful country , 2005 Münchner Kammerspiele - predominantly young people create an evening about their homeland in a beer garden: people, places, customs or even the language and the music itself
  • A fairy tale haunts me in my brain , 2006 Schauspielhaus Hannover - The story of the difficult to grasp and contradicting life of Heinrich Heine
  • Lust , 2006 St. Pauli Theater Hamburg - In the commercial environment of a table dance bar, those who are actually invisible and not for sale have their say. Because they work in the morning and are not in the limelight: These are the five women on a cleaning crew
  • Father's Day - a musical journey into desperation , 2006 Thalia Theater (Hamburg) - It's Father's Day. And man celebrates. For what he is, what he always was, or always wanted to be
  • Café Amazonien , 2007 St. Pauli Theater Hamburg - In a café somewhere in Hamburg's nowhere, characters meet who couldn't be more different: a butcher's assistant, a prostitute, a dominant boss and her daughter, three nuns ... (production supervised by Wittenbrink of the Hamburg School of Music )
  • Hello Germany - A concert hall , 2008 Schauspielhaus Hannover - A public square in Germany, an inner-city high-rise estate in the background, a kiosk, a staircase, a meeting place, a small stage. Apparently a district festival. Today, what does not belong together meets here: the local politician and the tramp, the young people who hang out on the subway, the kiosk woman, the businessman, the students. With all this talk and whispering in magazines and chat shows about export and soccer world championships, about feelings of home, housewife careers, Pisa study, flogging kids, integration, coalition, '68 and '89, the impression that being German and being in -Being Germany is one thing above all: incredibly complicated
  • Let's get out! , 2008 Schauspielhaus Graz - The main square: meeting point for visitors and residents of this city, a place where lonely and sociable, lost and stranded meet. A sausage stand is its secret center of gravity, around it big stories and small dramas take place, all in search of the longings of the young, the dreams of the elderly and the wishes of all of us.
  • Night gas station , 2008 St. Pauli Theater Hamburg - A “Christmas fairy tale for adults, a gorgeous Kiez nativity play” ( Hamburger Abendblatt ) in front of the Esso backdrop, which has been reconstructed almost true to the original based on the example of the neighboring Taubenstrasse
  • And goodbye! - A final chord , 2009 Schauspielhaus Hannover - In 2000 a plane took off at the Hanoverian song recital “Miles and More” (see above) - and has not landed since then. Now the secret of this flight has been revealed: there was a crash landing in "paradise". Under the palm trees of an island - presumably very close to Fiji - boredom spreads among the stranded passengers. Sometimes they dream of the past, sometimes they get on each other's nerves, suddenly a gorilla invades the camp and interpersonal relationships develop - or not… With this recital, Wittenbrink says goodbye to his Hanoverian audience and so this evening includes (not only but also) in goodbye with many pieces of the seven programs premiered in this city
  • So we live and always say goodbye , 2009 Burgtheater Vienna - With this title from Rainer Maria Rilke's “Duineser Elegien”, Wittenbrink joins the farewell theme of the last premieres of the Burgtheater. If half of all hits, chansons, pop songs and folk songs are about finding each other, then in the other half of music history one or the other suddenly sits there alone. And depending on the temperament, milieu and previous history, it means “goodbye quietly Servus” or “Baba and fall 'ned” - but “Who will cry when you part ...?” The characters of this evening all have had a farewell: maybe a little everyday, perhaps a deliberate and very fundamental one, or the last big one. Or they just ran away ...
  • The lobbyists , December 2009 Staatsschauspiel Dresden - The lobbyists are the residents of a hotel lobby, and they have lived there for a very, very long time. The concierge rests gently at the reception desk, this strange hotel has not welcomed new guests for days long gone; it has quietly fallen out of time, and there it lies dreamy and sunk. The lift boy has long outgrown his uniform, and next to him the sign with the words “Out of order” sways tiredly. No sound comes from the kitchen, only now and then you can see the face of the cook in the viewing window of the swinging door , who is looking to see if a guest isn't getting lost. And the weird little crowd of permanent guests has long been made a living inventory. So the lobbyists sit and console themselves with music. "We sit together so happily and love each other so much", they sing, dream of "Love in an elevator" or are sure: "Now the fun days are coming". And then something actually happens. The lobbyists get visitors - and suddenly everything is completely different
  • Never mind , November 2010, Theater in der Josefstadt - at the sausage stand, students meet millionaires, tourists meet locals and poor meet rich. On the evening of the premiere, Franz Wittenbrink himself sat at the piano.
  • Koninginnenacht , April 2012, Nationale Toneel, The Hague (NL)
  • Men at the Schauspiel Köln , a football song recital (world premiere October 25, 2012) at EXPO XXI
  • Forever Young , 2013 Theater in der Josefstadt - five elderly gentlemen in the cafe, flanked by three younger women, ponder the world, life and love. A recital full of passions, turbulence and melancholy between bar and stretcher.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Taz.de: Franz Wittenbrink on revolutionaryism “My master plan was the revolution”. Retrieved February 25, 2014 .
  2. ↑ St. Pauli: Against do-gooders. In: zeit.de . September 16, 2016, accessed September 17, 2016 .
personal data
SURNAME Wittenbrink, Franz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German arranger, composer, conductor, director and pianist
DATE OF BIRTH August 25, 1948
PLACE OF BIRTH bad Bentheim