Hugo Käch

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hugo Käch

Hugo Käch (born September 26, 1927 in Lucerne ; † December 31, 2003 in Flurlingen ) was a Swiss conductor , composer and music film director .

Life

Hugo Käch was born on September 26, 1927 in Lucerne as the youngest of four children. After graduating from the Conservatory in Lucerne, he taught music theory there and studied composition with Paul Hindemith at the University of Zurich and conducting with Igor Markevitch . Hugo Käch composed German psalms for the court church in Lucerne, where his former school colleague, the theologian Hans Küng , was vicar at the time, even before the liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council. The relationship with Küng aroused a strong theological and liturgical interest in him, which was also shown again and again in his later compositions.

He became a master student and assistant to Herbert von Karajan , who signed him as the first Swiss conductor to the Vienna State Opera in 1961. It was Karajan who brought him to film in 1967, first as an assistant, then as a director. Hugo Käch was one of the first to make music possible as a live broadcast on television. He created his own unmistakable visual language and shaped a whole genre. "He takes control of the music and the optical events and composes his pictures, often inspired by the moment."

Under his direction, around 500 concert and opera broadcasts with all the great conductors, soloists and orchestras of his time for film productions and television stations worldwide were made.

From 1980 to 1986 Hugo Käch directed the New Year's Concerts of the Vienna Philharmonic under the baton of Lorin Maazel .

Since Claudio Abbado founded the Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala in 1982, Hugo Käch directed the television broadcasts of concerts from La Scala in Milan for Rete 4 (Mediaset) until shortly before his death.

In 1998 he directed the world's first recording from the Forbidden City in Beijing, the opera Turandot . (Conductor: Zubin Mehta )

In 1974 Hugo Käch returned to Switzerland. Walther Bringolf , long-time Mayor of Schaffhausen and founder of the International Bach Society (IBG), brought him to the Schaffhausen Music School, which in 1978 was transferred to a conservatory under his direction. Hugo Käch had been associated with Schaffhausen as a conductor and composer since the 1950s. In 1975 he took over the women's choir and the men's choir Schaffhausen (today Schaffhauser Oratorienchor). Even after his resignation (1984), he continued Hugo Käch's intensive collaboration with the choirs as director of music schools and conservatories until 1991. Numerous compositions were created, including for the Schaffhausen Good Friday concerts. He not only performed with the two choirs at the International Bach Festival Schaffhausen , but also several times at the Carinthian Summer Ossiach and the Ravenna Festival. In addition, he regularly conducted orchestral concerts at home and abroad.

Hugo Käch was married to the piano teacher Ruth Käch-Tanner for almost 50 years and has five children.

Works

Compositions (selection)

  • Okesa - Suite for Orchestra (1956)
  • Gotthard - Prelude for Wind Orchestra (1959, dedicated to Walther Bringolf)
  • Trio for piano, violin and violoncello (1967)
  • Ossiacher Kindermesse - (1985 - Texts: Ernst A. Ekker )
  • Henry Dunant - oratorio based on texts by Henry Dunant and various poets (1988, 125 years of the Red Cross)
  • Laudes Creaturarum - Cantata based on the Cantata of St. Francis of Assisi with texts by Ernst A. Ekker (1989)
  • Requiem for Helmut Wobisch (1990)
  • Paracelsus - Chamber opera based on a verse by Arthur Schnitzler (1993)
  • Vergine Madre - for soprano, children's choir and orchestra, based on the hymn by Dante Alighieri (1996)
  • "I'm living right now, as the century is coming ..." - for soprano, speaker and chamber orchestra, based on texts from Rainer Maria Rilke's " Book of Hours " (1999)

Film and television (selection)

literature

  • Hugo Käch: 20 years at the Lucerne Conservatory. Lucerne through the ages / issue 23, Lucerne 1962
  • Jean-Christophe Ammann : Contemporaries see Hans Erni. Kunstkreis, Luzern 1972, pp. 167–173
  • Kurt Dieman: "Be embraced, millions" - The New Year's Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic. Österreichischer Bundesverlag ÖBV, Vienna 1983, ISBN 3-215-05116-8 , p. 63, p. 171–174
  • Renate Ulm : Rafael Kubelík's "Golden Age". Bärenreiter, Kassel 2006, ISBN 3-7618-1912-9 , DVD enclosed.

Awards

  • Merit Medal of the Swiss Red Cross (November 12, 1988)

Web links

  • SUISA work database (title can only be viewed using the search function)
  • Unitel catalog (titles can only be viewed using the search function)
  • Swissbib (title can only be viewed using the search function)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kurt Dieman: "Be embraced, millions" - The New Year's Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic. Österreichischer Bundesverlag ÖBV, Vienna 1983, ISBN 3-215-05116-8 , pp. 171-174.
  2. ↑ https://www.tobias-broeker.de/rare-manuscripts/gl/k%C3%A4ch-hugo/
personal data
SURNAME Käch, Hugo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss conductor, composer and music film director
DATE OF BIRTH September 26, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Lucerne , Switzerland
DATE OF DEATH December 31, 2003
Place of death Flurlingen , Switzerland