Klaus Wüsthoff

Klaus Wüsthoff (born July 1, 1922 in Berlin ) is a German composer .

Life

Klaus Wüsthoff is the son of a lawyer interested in music, who was able to change the family name Herzfeld to Wüsthoff at the beginning of the National Socialist rule, thus ensuring the family's survival. Klaus Wüsthoff spent 4 years in a Soviet prisoner of war in which it Hans Vogt (composer, 1911) in counterpoint taught. After his return from captivity, he studied from 1949 at the Hochschule für Musik Berlin , a. a. with Boris Blacher and Schwarz-Schilling . From 1953 to 1959 he was production manager and later head of the dance music department at RIAS . There he organized the interdepartmental series of chamber music on the Jazzpodium , for which u. a. Wilhelm Killmayer and Werner Heider wrote commissioned works. After a two-year interlude as a resident composer at the state theaters in Berlin -  Schillertheater and Schloßparktheater  - under Boleslav Barlog, he became a freelance composer and presenter of his own educational programs on radio and television.

His catalog of works includes two operas, seven musicals, 35 orchestral works and soloist concerts, choral and chamber music; Wind, jazz, documentary, school and advertising music, also some works for plucked orchestra (including theme music from ZDF-Nachrichten heute ; specialist book: The role of music in film, radio and television advertising ). He was commissioned by the Beethoven Orchester Bonn to compose the children's opera Flori and his Kokofant , which will be premiered on May 12, 2013 in the Bonn Opera House. With the Klaus Wüsthoff Trio in 2015, at the age of 92, he recorded an album with 27 hits from the 1930s to 50s as a singing pianist, which was published in March 2016 under the name Über die Liebe - a hit album to sing along to .

Klaus Wüsthoff has won several composition competitions, a. a. Audience winner in the competition of the Berlin Philharmonic on the occasion of its 100th anniversary with the timpani concert Metrum (1982).

Honorary positions: Member and chairman of the GEMA Works Committee , member of the Landesmusikrat Berlin , board member of the German Composers' Association and the Dramatists Union . (For his work as initiator and project manager of youth development programs, composition competitions and concert series of young Forum German composers of orchestral music , composing students , New Tafelmusik , New salon music , Glienicke Palace Concerts , Zehlendorfer chamber concerts u. A.) He received in 1992 the Federal Cross of Merit and in 1999 the Paul Woitschach- Prize of the German Composers Association. In 2007 he was awarded the Golden Needle and, on his 90th birthday, honorary membership of the Dramatists Union .

Orchestral works (selection)

• All of my animals
• Old England suite
• Arpeggio concerto for solo harp and orchestra
• Camping suite
• Collages for guitar and orchestra
• Concertino for piano and orchestra
• Concierto de Samba for 3 or 4 guitars and orchestra, 1982
• The climber
• The happy cyclist
• The rain fairy, ballet music
• The Scheldt
• The city of tomorrow
• The menagerie in love
• Three Russian Fantasies for Piano and Orchestra
• A little harp serenade for harps and small orchestra
• Europe concert for piano and orchestra
• Flori and his cocofant, children's opera
• Flori and his Kokofant, children's musical
• Golf games
• Heaven and Hell Berlin, musical
• In the Kinderland
• Cuddly toy concert for large orchestra and storyteller
• Madame
• Meter, drum concert
• Trip to Greece
• Slavic Rhapsody
• Slavic rhythms for plucked orchestra and percussion
• Spanish dance scene
• Transatlantic Rhapsody for piano and orchestra
• Meeting point at the main train station
• Four street scenes
• Christmas cantata for young people
• Christmas carol cantata
• Zille sein Milljöh, song revue

Web links

• Works by and about Klaus Wüsthoff in the catalog of the German National Library
• Homepage of Klaus Wüsthoff