Michael Proksch

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Michael Proksch (born October 15, 1958 in Dresden ) is a German composer , pianist, author and piano teacher . He has lived in Munich since 1985 , where he works as a freelancer. He became known through a large number of publications, film music, musical-literary projects and piano compositions for children and young people. His music can be heard on over 20 CDs and, among other things, in the portrait program "It was not over with the flight" on Bavarian television . In 2010 he and his sister Dorothea Ebert achieved a bestseller with the book “And Suddenly We Were Criminals” about his childhood in the GDR , the attempt to escape and his time as a political prisoner .

Life

Michael Proksch grew up together with two sisters as the son of the art historian Kurt Proksch and the teacher Gertrud Proksch in Dresden. His parents encouraged his musical talents from an early age. From the age of five he received private piano lessons. Later he switched to the class of Wolfgang Plehn at the Carl Maria von Weber Academy of Music in Dresden as a so-called practice student . Because of his mathematical talents he was delegated by the school authorities from the 9th grade to the special school for electronic industry "Martin Andersen Nexö" in Dresden. There he graduated from high school in 1977.

Until he was called up for military service in the National People's Army in November 1977, he worked as a night watchman in the “Old Masters” picture gallery in Dresden. After 18 months of conscription, Proksch studied electronics from September 1979 to the beginning of 1981 at the Technical University of Karl-Marx-Stadt, today's Chemnitz University of Technology . After dropping out of electronics studies, he retired to his grandparents' holiday home in the Ore Mountains for a year to devote himself exclusively to playing the piano and thus to prepare for the entrance exam for studying music. He earned his living as a postman and working night shifts as a band assistant at VEB dkk Scharfenstein , a manufacturer of refrigerators.

In order to bridge the time until the beginning of his studies he played piano, keyboard and guitar in the band "Akzent". From September 1982 to August 1983 he studied piano at the Carl Maria von Weber Academy of Music in Dresden in Günter Hörig's class .

Attempted to escape to the Federal Republic and imprisonment

In August 1983 Michael Proksch, his sister Dorothea Ebert, his brother-in-law Mathias Ebert and his college friend Gerd Hortsch began preparing for their escape from the GDR : They bought a used Moskvich car and ostensibly drove to Hungary first and then for a vacation to Bulgaria , where they tried to cross the border in western Bulgaria in the area around Mount Kom (today the border between Bulgaria and Serbia ). After a 14-hour hike, they came across the first border security systems at midnight. After negotiating these first installations, the group thought that they would be in what was then Yugoslavia. However, this was a mistake. The border line was deliberately entered incorrectly on the tourist map and the actual border was several hundred meters further to the west. When they reached the real border at dawn, they were forced to surrender and captured by gunfire from Bulgarian border guards. The refugees were transferred from the Bulgarian remand prison in Sofia to the GDR and interrogated from September 1983 to January 1984 in the East Berlin remand prison of the State Security Magdalenenstrasse and later in Hohenschönhausen .

In January 1984 a court in Dresden found Michael Proksch, his sister Dorothea Ebert and Gerd Hortsch guilty of illegal border crossing in a serious case under §213 (escape from the republic ). They were sentenced to 2 years and 8 months in prison. Mathias Ebert received 2 years and 10 months in prison, presumably because he bought and drove the car. Michael Proksch was incarcerated in prisons Cottbus and Brandenburg to February 1985. In February 1985, he was just like his fellow refugees by the Federal Republic of Germany ransomed .

Life in the Federal Republic

After moving to Munich , Proksch initially taught beginners to play the piano, since after the hard labor in prison (see publication 2016) it took him longer to get back to his old manual dexterity. He then completed a pianistic and piano didactic training with Lola Tavor in Geneva between 1986 and 1989 and built up a private piano class in Nymphenburg . Between 1990 and 1993 he studied composition with Jürgen Werner in Berlin and with Rudi Spring in Munich. During this time I wrote my first own compositions for children.

Proksch is artistically active in various fields: He composes music primarily for documentary and image films . Since his publication "A Spaniard for Elise" at Breitkopf & Härtel , he has been giving regular training courses on "piano four hands" and "piano didactics". Since 1996 he has worked with actress Juliane Kosarev in musical programs, which have led to performances in Berlin, Geneva, Paris, Hamburg and Munich. In addition to numerous stage projects, between 1997 and 2005 he published several volumes of piano didactics “Piano from four” at Breitkopf & Härtel. Over a hundred piano pieces followed, which were published in various booklets. In 2006 he lived as “Composer in Residence” at Schloss Großkochberg and performed the compositions he wrote there. Thanks to a composition scholarship, he was able to work on the multimedia music cycle “D-Mut” for over a year. On October 3rd, 2010 it was premiered as part of the celebrations for the 20th anniversary of the reunification in Dresden. With piano, saxophone, string quartet, percussion, electric guitar and choir, as well as with actor Alf Mahlo, musicians from East and West Germany played together as a symbolic act.

Since 2015 Proksch has performed his own program “Longing for Silence” together with Stephan Rieckhoff, the solo cellist of the “Suisse Romand” orchestra, and performs new piano compositions every year in the Johannis Hall of Nymphenburg Palace .

Film music

Proksch composed music primarily for documentaries for Bavarian Radio and ORF , as well as for image films. A whole series of productions for television emerged from the collaboration with the Munich director Angelika Lizius, for example "Caspar David Friedrich - Landscapes of the Soul" (2001), "Frida Kahlo" (2010), "Cartier and Faberge" (2003) , “The Right Handling of Time” (1997), “The Four Seasons” (1999), “Golden Shine in Dark Times” (2002), “German Expressionists” (2006). In the 2010 film “Escape is not over”, which was created in the “ Lebenslinien ” series of the Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation, Proksch set his own career to music.

For the Salzburg company “ebner film & Multimedia”, television productions such as “Mächtig, Wild und Still - With the power of water” (2013) or “Almen - Between Idylle and Reality” (2017) were created. In addition, award-winning image films such as “Baumit” or “Wiener Wohnen”. Through the collaboration with the director Freya Klier , compositions for the television films “We want to be free people! 1953 Popular Uprising "and" The Forgotten. Death where others go on vacation ”(2011).

For the Museum Leopold Vienna he set the film “Impressionist Painting from the Musée d'Orsay” to music. For the “Hohe Tauern National Park” museum, music was created for “A Day on the Alm” and “Microcosm of Butterfly Meadow”.

Book "And suddenly we were criminals"

In the years 2006 to 2009 Proksch, his sister Dorothea Ebert and their mother Gertrud Proksch wrote memoirs that eventually led to the book "And suddenly we were criminals - story of a republic escape", which was published in 2010 by dtv publishing company . Numerous reviews of the book have been published, for example by Freya Klier on Deutschlandfunk Kultur .

The book was presented in July 2010 at the Federal Foundation for the Study of the SED Dictatorship and in November 2010 at the Literature Forum in the Brecht House in conversation with the historian Wolfgang Benz . As a result, there were several portraits of Proksch and his sister, for example in the series "Lebenslinien" on Bavarian television.

Compositions and stage projects

  • 1994 World premiere of “Mary's Musical Journey” (16 variations for piano) in Brussels
  • 1995 World premiere "Only me, only you", instrumental piece for "The Odeon Orchestra"
  • 1996 World premiere of the piano composition "Hyakutake" in Munich
  • 1997 “Genialer Künstlerschweiß”, a literary musical project on texts by Heinrich Heine with classical music, own compositions and improvisations, appearances in Hamburg, Cologne, Berlin, Munich, Geneva and Paris
  • 2000 "How to have a love adventure", literary musical project, poetry from 2000 years with own compositions, appearances until 2007
  • 2006 “Longing for Silence”, compositions for cello and piano
  • 2010 World premiere of the music cycle 'D-Mut' in Dresden.

Publications

Sheet music, piano schools and CDs

  • 1997 Piano from four: 72 pieces from classical and modern , Mathias Ebert, Adera-Verlag Munich (CD)
  • 1997 to 2000 For little piano artists. Piano school in four parts, Adera-Verlag Munich.
  • 1997, with Juliane Kosarev: CD Genialer Künstlerschweiß with texts by Heinrich Heine and own compositions.
  • 2001, with Juliane Kosarev How to have a love affair: poetry and music from two thousand years. Adera, Munich 2001 (CD)
  • 2003 to 2005 setting to music by Anselm Grün Engel , The Little Book of Real Life , The Little Book of Real Happiness! (CDs)
  • 2003 “A Spaniard for Elise”, sheet music with CD, Verlag Breitkopf & Härtel
  • 2004 CD "Piano Stories", Adera-Verlag Munich
  • 2005 sheet music "Piano Stories Part 1 and 2"
  • 2006 setting of "Samantha" by Sergio Barbaren (CD)
  • 2007 Melancholie music for film (CD)
  • 2008 single "Felix Football, Football" on 313 music JWP (CD)
  • 2010 "Alpentöne" with Andreas Suttner (double CD)
  • 2012 Sheet music with CD "Piano Poetry" from Breitkopf & Härtel
  • 2016 CD "Piano poems" with minds and music from DNA Verlag
  • 2018 sheet music book "Time for me - 25 atmospheric piano pieces for all ages", Heinrichshofen & Noetzel
  • 2018 sheet music booklet "Little Hänschen travels into the world of the great masters", Heinrichshofen & Noetzel

Publications on the GDR

  • Dorothea Ebert, Michael Proksch, Ina-Maria Martens (eds.): And suddenly we were criminals: the story of an escape from the republic. Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 2010, 2nd edition 2014, ISBN 978-3-423-24799-3 .
  • 2014 Article in Just get out of here! 18 stories against oblivion. Ankerherz-Verlag.
  • 2016 Contribution to The Reichsbahn and the prison system in the GDR. Klartext-Verlag.
  • 2017 article in Between Humor and Repression - Studying in the GDR. Central German publisher.

Prizes and awards

  • 2006 Composer in Residence of the Klassik Stiftung Weimar in Schloss Großkochberg
  • 2007 Prize winner in the composition competition of the Tonkünstlerverband
  • 2009 “Intermedia Globe Silver” for “Baumit - Ideas with a Future” at the World Media Festival
  • 2016 “Intermedia Globe Gold” for “Almen - between idyll and reality” at the World Media Festival Tourism 2016, as well as “Gold Remi Award” at the Houston International Film Festival, Texas, 2016.
  • 2016 “Silver Remi Award” for “Mikrokosmos Butterfly Meadow” at the Houston International Film Festival, Texas.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ see the classification of the book report under Book Report 2010 . accessed December 10, 2018
  2. ↑ The curriculum vitae follows the description in the book "And suddenly we were criminals". The most detailed biography on the Internet can be found at the Kaske Foundation at [1]
  3. ↑ On the painter Gerd H. Hortsch (1956–1993) see the page http://www.gerdhortsch.de/ . Hortsch was a student with Rudi Tröger .
  4. ↑ see also page about the D-Mut project at the Kaske Foundation for New Music
  5. ↑ see review Prison instead of Aufbruch, October 3, 2010, accessed December 9, 2018
  6. ↑ see the document on the book presentation at the Federal Foundation for Processing, PDF accessed December 9, 2018
  7. ^ Page about the presentation of the book at the literature forum in the Brechthaus
personal data
SURNAME Proksch, Michael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German composer, pianist and author
DATE OF BIRTH October 15, 1958
PLACE OF BIRTH Dresden