Paul Christmann

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Paulus Christmann in the Alte Oper Frankfurt. (2013)

Paulus Christmann (born February 7, 1971 in Bad Soden am Taunus ; † January 31, 2014 in Offenbach ) was a German conductor and choir director . From 2006 until his death he led the Deutsche Philharmoniker in Berlin as chief conductor and artistic director.

Life

Christmann had singing lessons from his father at a young age, learned violin and piano in Kelkheim and began singing in the church choir of St. Dionysius in Kelkheim (Taunus) in 1979 at the age of eight . In 1988 he enrolled as a young student at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts. In 1991 he began studying ensemble conducting and vocal pedagogy at the University of Mainz and studied with Eduard Wollitz , among others .

After graduating in 1994, he began his music director studies at the Cologne University of Music and completed a vocal course at the same time. As a graduate Kapellmeister, Christmann added a doctoral degree in historical musicology at the University of Mainz and completed it in 2002 with a dissertation on Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy.

Christmann also received artistic impulses from master classes with Sir Georg Solti , Sergiu Celibidache , Helmuth Rilling , Walter Berry , Claudio Abbado and Hans Michael Beuerle .

Both as a conductor and as a musicologist, Christmann has worked for years on the symphonic repertoire of German Romanticism and its particular stylistic implementation. In particular, the compositions by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy run like a red thread through his life: Christmann repeatedly performed the great oratorios and orchestral works, but also lesser-known pieces by the composer, among others with the Frankfurt Police Choir, which he oversaw for over ten years . Christmann also directed the Frankfurter Singakademie , a renowned amateur choir from Frankfurt am Main with currently around 140 active members. In 2005 he also founded the Mendelssohn Society Frankfurt am Main e. V.

Christmann initiated the Rhein-Main Festival, which took place for the first time in March 2014 and was intended to culturally connect the entire Rhine-Main region. In the middle of preparations for this festival, he died on January 31, 2014 of a pulmonary embolism. The Hessian art minister Boris Rhein declared that Christmann, as artistic director and initiator of the Frankfurt Mendelssohn Days and director of the Frankfurt Singakademie, “made a special contribution to maintaining and researching the musical legacy of Romanticism and promoting the great choral traditions in Frankfurt and Hesse ".

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Paulus Christmann ( Memento of the original from February 26, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Homepage of the Deutsche Philharmoniker, accessed on February 21, 2014. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.deutsche-philharmoniker.de
  2. ↑ Paulus Christmann ( Memento of the original from February 25, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Article in rhein-main-wiki.de, accessed on February 21, 2014. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.rhein-main-wiki.de
  3. ^ Obituary to Paulus Christmann , article in the Höchst Kreisblatt, accessed on February 21, 2014.
  4. ^ Chief conductor of the Rhein-Main-Festspiele Dr. Paulus Christmann has passed away , press release Hessian Ministry for Science and Art from February 4, 2014
personal data
SURNAME Christmann, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German conductor and choir director
DATE OF BIRTH 7th February 1971
PLACE OF BIRTH Bad Soden am Taunus , Germany
DATE OF DEATH January 31, 2014
Place of death Offenbach , Germany