Max Pommer (conductor)

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Max Pommer (born February 9, 1936 in Leipzig ) is a German choir and orchestra conductor and musicologist .

Life

The great-grandson of the architect and building contractor Max Pommer (and thus in the fourth generation bearer of the first name Max in the Pommer family) attended the Thomasschule in Leipzig and founded the Thomasschule's chamber orchestra there. After graduating from high school, he studied conducting and piano at the Leipzig University of Music and from 1960 to 1964 musicology at the University of Leipzig , which he received in 1968 with a dissertation on the subject of "Melodic Influences of the Länders on the Viennese Composers of the 19th and 20th Centuries" PhD .

Pommer was choir assistant with Hans Sandig and did an orchestral internship with Herbert Kegel , later he worked with Herbert von Karajan . After working as Kapellmeister in Borna , from 1962 to 1973 he directed the Leipzig Chamber Music Association and the Hanns Eisler New Music group .

From 1973 to 1987 Pommer was director of the Leipzig University Choir . During this time he founded the Neue Bachische Collegium Musicum together with members of the Gewandhaus Orchestra in 1979 and was its artistic director until 1987. In collaboration with the trumpet soloist Ludwig Güttler, he made this chamber orchestra, which has received many international prizes (including the German Record Prize for the recording of Bach's Brandenburg Concerts ), known to the world long before the reunification of Germany, which also brought Pommer his international breakthrough. An extensive activity as a guest conductor led Pommer to internationally renowned orchestras. In 1980 he was appointed professor with artistic teaching activities at the University of Leipzig.

Afterwards Max Pommer was chief conductor of the Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra from 1987 to 1991 as general music director . After initial courses and a visiting professorship at the Saar University of Music , Pommer was appointed professor of orchestral education and conducting in 1990. In Saarbrücken he built a university orchestra and directed it and the conducting class of the university until 2005. a. the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Orchester national Bordeaux Aquitaine and SWR Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden and Freiburg . Since 2006 he has been guest conductor of the Nagoya Philharmonic Orchestra in Tokyo.

In 1991 he conducted the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra for the first time at the Salzburg Festival . Since 1991 he has also worked with the Hamburger Camerata , of which he was artistic director from 2001 until his 75th birthday in 2011. On his departure, Pommer was awarded the Biermann-Ratjen Medal of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg for his various services in music . Since 2000 Pommer has been a permanent guest conductor of the Holland Symfonia , an association of musicians from the Noordhollands Philharmonisch Orkest (NPO) and the Nederlands Balletorkest (NBO). After his retirement at the end of the summer semester 2003, Pommer is increasingly fulfilling his national and international conducting obligations and, until 2011, his concert activities with the Hamburger Camerata.

In 2009 he conducted Brigitte Fassbaender's acclaimed production of Das Rheingold at the Tiroler Landestheater in Innsbruck .

Pommers CD recordings are varied. For Capriccio alone he made 22 recordings with orchestral works by Bach , Handel and Debussy . He recorded Mozart's symphonies and early operas for Berlin Classics. The Finnish label Ondine released recordings of the symphonic works of the Finnish composers Einojuhani Rautavaara and Kalevi Aho , but also works by Kurt Weill . Eterna also offers music by contemporary German composers such as Eisler , Dessau and Schönberg .

Awards

literature

  • Horst Riedel: Stadtlexikon Leipzig from A to Z. Pro Leipzig, Leipzig 2005, ISBN 3-936508-03-8 .
  • Thomas Wolter: Pike in the carp pond (interview with Max Pommer). In: alla breve - magazine of the Saarland University of Music and Theater , 8th year (2003), no. 1, p. 16 f. ( Online , PDF; 1.56 MB).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Press office of the Senate: Senator Biermann Ratjen Medal to Max Pommer. Authority honors artistic director of the Hamburger Camerata. Press release from January 20, 2011.
  2. Contemporary game on the fateful question "Money or Love" (saarbruecker-zeitung.de) accessed on July 25, 2013