Winfried Bönig

Winfried Bönig (* 1959 in Bamberg ) is a German organist and university professor. He is the cathedral organist at Cologne Cathedral as well as professor of artistic organ playing and improvisation and director of the Catholic Church Music course at the Cologne University of Music and Dance .

Life

After his first organ lessons with the Bamberg cathedral organist Wolfgang Wünsch, Winfried Bönig studied organ, conducting and church music with Franz Lehrndorfer and Fritz Schieri from 1978 to 1984 at the Munich University of Music . The exams in church music and organ, which he passed with distinction in 1982, was followed by the award of the master class diploma in 1984 . In 1993 he was in the subject musicology at the University of Augsburg to Dr. phil. PhD.

From 1984 to 1998 Bönig was organist and conductor at the Catholic parish church of St. Josef in Memmingen . There he directed performances of the major orchestral masses and performed all the organ works by Johann Sebastian Bach , Max Reger and Olivier Messiaen in concert cycles . In 1995 he was awarded the City of Memmingen Culture Prize.

Bönig has been a professor at the Cologne University of Music since 1998, and cathedral organist at Cologne Cathedral since 2001. In addition to teaching and performing the cathedral liturgy, he gives concerts on the cathedral organs as well as at home and abroad. The twelve summer organ celebrations in the cathedral are among the best-known and best-attended organ concert series in the world, three of which are performed by Bönig himself, the rest by renowned guest organists.

Several contemporary composers dedicated their own compositions to Bönig, which he performed for the first time, such as Enjott Schneider , Jean Guillou , Stephen Tharp , Robert HP Platz , Johannes Schild and Colin Mawby .

Among Bönig's numerous CD recordings as organist and conductor, those on the Cologne cathedral organs and his own organ arrangement of the Goldberg Variations received particular attention.

Web links

• Literature by and about Winfried Bönig in the catalog of the German National Library
• Cologne Cathedral Music
• Organ celebrations in Cologne Cathedral
• People at the cathedral, the master of 7000 registers
• WDR 3 (West German Broadcasting) mosaic. Conversation on Saturday December 1, 2018

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Biography based on Cologne Cathedral Music , added to the CD booklet Bach im Kölner Dom , ISBN 3-937857-21-4 , pp. 44–46.

predecessor	Office	successor
Clemens Ganz	Organist at Cologne Cathedral since 2001