Franz Xaver Ohnesorg

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Franz Xaver Ohnesorg (born March 9, 1948 in Weilheim in Upper Bavaria ) is a German music manager.

Life

Ohnesorg is the son of a master baker couple. After graduating from high school in 1968 at the Adolf-Weber-Gymnasium in Munich , after completing his training as a flautist from 1968 to 1973 in Munich, he studied business administration and general music and theater studies as well as art history . He completed his academic training with a degree in business administration. Subsequently, Ohnesorg worked as a freelance journalist for various radio companies. In 1978 he became orchestra director of the Munich Philharmonic and in 1979 won Sergiu Celibidache as the new general music director. From 1983 to 1999 he was first director and later artistic director of the Cologne Philharmonic . At the end of his career in Cologne, he was awarded the honorary title of Founding Director of the Cologne Philharmonic by the Supervisory Board of KölnMusik GmbH .

In 1994 he founded the MusikTriennale Köln as a festival that was originally dedicated entirely to contemporary music. In 1999 he accepted Isaac Stern's repeated invitation and became the first non-American Executive and Artistic Director of Carnegie Hall in New York City . After two and a half years, he finally accepted the call of the Berlin Senate and returned to Europe as director of the Berlin Philharmonic. At the end of the Claudio Abbado era, he played a key role in the transformation of the orchestra into a foundation and thus prepared the reign of the new chief conductor Sir Simon Rattle .

At the beginning of 2003, when all the contracts for the foundation's successful practice and its financing had been drawn up, he returned entirely to the Rhineland. From there, he has been the artistic director of the Ruhr Piano Festival since 1996 and has developed it as an artistic lead project of the Initiativkreis Ruhr over the past few years into what is now the world's most important piano event. On June 1, 2005, Franz Xaver Ohnesorg was also appointed managing director of the Initiativkreis Ruhr and thus also director of the Ruhr Piano Festival. In this new role he restructured the organization of the Ruhr Piano Festival and thus created the conditions for the festival's artistic and economic success, which has since increased significantly. On this basis, the Initiativkreis Ruhr was able to resolve the establishment of the foundation at the end of the 2010 Capital of Culture year in order to secure the permanent existence of the Ruhr Piano Festival. On January 1, 2011, Franz Xaver Ohnesorg as director of the Ruhr Piano Festival was able to end his activity as managing director of the Initiativkreis Ruhr to take over the Ruhr Piano Festival as chairman of the Ruhr Piano Festival Foundation and Managing Director of the Ruhr Piano Festival Sponsoring und Service GmbH to direct.

In a number of honorary positions he serves z. B. on the board of the Zentral-Dombau-Verein zu Köln , as chairman of the board of trustees of the Kulturstiftung Kölner Dom , as chairman of the Kölner Kammerorchester e.V. V., as a member of the organizing committee of the International Telekom Beethoven Competition Bonn and the Board of Trustees of the University of Music and Dance in Cologne and as Senior Counselor of the American Academy in Berlin .

Awards

For his work as director of the Cologne Philharmonic, he was awarded the Dr. Kurt Neven DuMont Medal , which was followed by numerous honors from civil associations. In 1997 he received the special award of the Echo-Klassik and in 1998 the Medal of Merit of the German Composers' Association.

The state of North Rhine-Westphalia appointed Franz Xaver Ohnesorg professor in 1999. Austria honored him for his many years of idealistic work at the Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival as early as 1993 with the Cross of Merit for Science and Art, which was followed in 2002 by the 1st class medal for his commitment to the Vienna Philharmonic . He became an honorary member of the German Music Council . The Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts awarded him the Wilhelm Hausenstein Award in 2003 for services to cultural mediation and justified this with "his joy of discovery, his sympathy for experiments and his strict view of competence and substance". At the end of 2015 he was given the honorary title of “ Citizen of the Ruhr Area ”.

The education work of the Ruhr Piano Festival, initiated by Franz Xaver Ohnesorg, was awarded the Children to Olympus Prize by the Kulturstiftung der Länder in 2010 and supported by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation in 2010 and 2012 as an Excellent Place in the Land of Ideas , 2013 with the YEAH! Young EARopean Award as well as the Young Ears Award in 2014.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Prof. Franz-Xaver Ohnesorg . Website of the Ruhr Piano Festival. Retrieved December 27, 2013.
personal data
SURNAME Ohnesorg, Franz Xaver
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German music manager
DATE OF BIRTH March 9, 1948
PLACE OF BIRTH Weilheim in Upper Bavaria