Wolfgang Gabriel

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Wolfgang Gabriel (born June 9, 1930 in Vienna ) is an Austrian composer , conductor and music teacher .

The son of a psychiatrist and a teacher played the piano as a child . After the end of the war , he attended the secondary school until 1948 . In addition, from 1946 he took piano lessons from Hans Sittner , who later became President of the Academy for Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, and took lessons in music theory from Leo Lehner , the founder of the “Jung-Wien” choir. In 1947 he entered the Academy for Music and Performing Arts in Vienna . There he studied piano with Grete Hinterhofer , music theory with Joseph Marx (later with Alfred Uhl ) and from 1950 conducting in the Kapellmeister class of Hans Swarowsky . In 1952 he completed his studies with distinction and an award.

From 1954 to 1996 Gabriel taught at the Vienna Music Academy, first as a répétiteur in the singing department, then as assistant to Ernst Reichert and finally as head of an opera class. In addition, from 1960 to 2007 he was artistic director of the Academic Orchestra Association . As a conductor, he has performed with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra , the Lower Austrian Tonkünstler , the ORF Symphony Orchestra and several Hungarian orchestras and then headed in the 1950s, a few years the newly founded Orchestra of Jeunesses Musicales . From 1988 to 2011 Wolfgang Gabriel was artistic director of the Bach Community in Vienna.

Gabriel composed more than 100 works, including several orchestral and instrumental concerts , chamber music (including several string quartets). Piano works and numerous song cycles. His tonal language was trained by Béla Bartók , Igor Stravinsky and Alban Berg . He wrote several of his works for his second wife, the singer Susan Dennis and for his son Martin Gabriel , who is principal oboist with the Vienna Philharmonic .

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