Thomas Neuhoff

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thomas Neuhoff (* 1957 in Bonn ) is a German conductor and church musician .

Life

Thomas Neuhoff studied Protestant church music and conducting at the Cologne University of Music a . a. with Volker Wangenheim and deepened his musical knowledge a. a. with John Eliot Gardiner and Helmuth Rilling . In 1983 he was appointed cantor of Bonn's Lukaskirche and head of the church choir located there, the Auerberger Kantorei, and shortly afterwards took over the direction of the Philharmonic Choir of the City of Bonn . Since 2002 he has also been the artistic director of the Bach Society in Cologne .

In addition to the standard works of choral music, Neuhoff puts his musical focus on the historical performance practice of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and his contemporaries as well as on the development of compositions from the 20th and 21st centuries. Some of them, including the oratorios by Edward Elgar and "A Mass of Life" by Frederick Delius , he premiered in Bonn ; he also directed the first performance in Cologne of Franz Schmidt's late romantic oratorio “ The Book with Seven Seals ”. Another focus of his work is on works of the Romantic period , in particular by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy , Robert Schumann , Johannes Brahms and Hugo Wolf . He appears as a pianist and presenter in the musical and literary chamber music series he designed in the Beethoven House in Bonn and in the Old Pawn Shop in Cologne .

In addition, for several years he has been carrying out highly regarded student projects in Bonn and Cologne to promote young musicians, often with a contemporary history background.

Guest performances led Neuhoff u. a. to the desks of the Frankfurt Museum Orchestra , the Brandenburg Philharmonic Potsdam, the Slovak Chamber Orchestra, the City of Oxford Orchestra, to the youth festival meeting in Bayreuth, where he was appointed to lead the choir workshop, and to France, where he played at the “ La Folle Journée ”with Ludwig van Beethoven's “ Missa solemnis ”was a guest. In June 2009 he performed the oratorios “ A Child of Our Time ” by Michael Tippett and “In Terra Pax” by Frank Martin at the podium of the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne for the first time in the Cologne Philharmonic . In 2018 he performed Benjamin Britten's “ War Requiem ” with the Federal Youth Orchestra and the choir of the Bach Association Cologne a. a. in the Berlin Philharmonic and in the National Forum for Music (Wrocław).

In 2005 Neuhoff was appointed church music director (KMD) for his work that radiated far beyond the Cologne-Bonn region .

In May 2016 he ended his position as director of the Philharmonic Choir of the City of Bonn, and in summer 2020 he will also hand over the artistic direction of the Bach Society in Cologne.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Britten's War Requiem. Retrieved December 7, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Thomas Neuhoff. In: bach-verein.de. Retrieved November 13, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Briefly noted . In: Concerto, magazine for early music . No. 288 , November 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Neuhoff, Thomas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German conductor and church musician
DATE OF BIRTH 1957
PLACE OF BIRTH Bonn