Thomas Hengelbrock

About

Official Site: http://www.kulturprojekte.com/bios/th/en/

Thomas Hengelbrock has made a name for himself as a discoverer of forgotten works, and with new interpretations of well-known repertoire. At the center of his artistic work stands an intensive intellectual occupation with each work in its historical context. Like Balthasar Neumann with his architectural synthesis of building, painting, sculpture, and garden, Thomas Hengelbrock strives for an integration of music and the other arts. For this reason he not only devotes himself intensively to opera, but also to a combination of unexpected and novel concert programs, as well as to semi-staged projects. His repertoire encompasses the sixteenth through twentieth centuries.

Thomas Hengelbrock began his career as a violinist. He received important artistic inspiration from Witold Lutoslawski, Maurizio Kagel, and Antal Dorati, as well as through his work in Nikolaus Harnoncourt's Concentus musicus. The Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, of which he was co-founder, played under his direction until 1997. He worked with the Amsterdam Bach Soloists from 1988 to 1991, and in 1995 the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen chose him as their first regular artistic director. With the latter ensemble he performed, among other things, Mozart's Don Giovanni at the Bonn Opera (direction: Roberto Ciulli), and was elected "Conductor of the Year" by the music critics of North Rhine-Westphalia. From 2000 to 2003 he was music director of Vienna's Volksoper. Thomas Hengelbrock founded the Balthasar Neumann Choir in 1991 and the ensemble of the same name in 1995, and with them he has set out to realize his artistic ideas. Moreover, he has been artistic director of the Feldkirch Festival since 2001.

As a conductor, has accepted invitations from numerous renowned orchestras, festivals, and opera houses in Paris, London, Madrid, Seville, Bologna, Parma, Prague, Jerusalem, Brussels, Rotterdam, Copenhagen, Vienna, Munich, and Berlin. He has worked with the Symphony Orchestra of the Bavarian Radio, the Bamberg and Vienna Symphony Orchestras, the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg, the Radio Symphony Orchestras of Berlin, Cologne, Stuttgart, and Copenhagen, the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra della Toscana, the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe.

Acclaimed performances under his direction were to be heard at major festivals: Resonancen Festival Vienna, Vienna Festwochen, Festwochen alter Musik Innsbruck, Bremen Music Festival, Dresden Music Festival, Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, Ludwigsburg Castle Festival, Schwetzingen Festival, Rheingau Music Festival, Music Festival Potsdam-Sanssouci, Handel Festival Halle, Bologna Festival, the Israel Festival Jerusalem, and many others.

Since his opera debut at the Vienna Festival in 1993 with Gluck's Alceste, Thomas Hengelbrock has been a celebrated opera conductor. He presented the first modern performances of Baldassare Galuppi's Il filosofo di campagna and the opera La divisione del mondo by Giovanni Legrenzi, which since its extravagant premiere in 1675 had never again been staged. Numerous opera productions have come about in collaboration with the internationally renowned directors Philippe Arlaud and Achim Freyer. With the latter, Hengelbrock achieved great successes at the Schwetzingen Festival with Joseph Haydn's L'anima del filosofo in 2001, and with Mozart's Magic Flute in 2002. Francesco Cavalli's opera La Didone, which Hengelbrock reconstructed from the manuscript sources and performed in Schwetzingen and at Berlin's State Opera Unter den Linden, is available as a world premiere recording with the Balthasar Neumann Ensemble. His interpretation of Luigi Dallapiccola's Il prigioniero at the Vienna Volksoper was hailed by the critics in 2003.

Hengelbrock has realized semi-staged performances with literature and music in collaboration with the actor Klaus Maria Brandauer – Manfred (Byron/Schumann), Peer Gynt (Ibsen/Grieg), and a new version of Egmont (Goethe/Beethoven). At EXPO 2000 in Hannover, they staged an "Ecclesiastical Action" with works by B. A. Zimmermann, Ligeti, and Bach. For their outstanding accomplishments, Hengelbrock and Brandauer were awarded the Bremen Music Festival Prize in 2000. Within the framework of the Feldkirch Festival 2003, Hengelbrock and Brandauer, together with the Balthasar Neumann Ensemble, gave the premiere performance of the melodrama King of the Night by Jan Müller-Wieland. In December 2003 they went on tour together through Europe with a special Christmas concert.

Thomas Hengelbrock, with his ensembles and the actor Graham F. Valentine, presented musical theater in the literal sense at the Ruhr Triennale 2003: King Arthur with music by Henry Purcell and drama by John Dryden in a staged production by Thomas Hengelbrock delighted the audience, as did the project "Metamorphoses of Melancholy".

"Abenteuer Musik" (The Adventure of Music) is the title of a concert series that the Southwest German Radio (SWR) inaugurated in 1998 together with Hengelbrock and the two ensembles. Here they presented the project "From the Music Library of J. S. Bach", which afforded a fascinating glance at the works Bach considered the "classics" of his time. Two CD recordings resulted from this three-part concert series. The performance and recording of Antonio Lotti's Requiem in F major, which Hengelbrock rediscovered, attracted great attention. The world premiere recording was awarded the Diapason d'Or. His most recent recording, released in autumn 2004, is of Handel's Dixit Dominus and Antonio Caldara's Missa dolorosa and Crucifixus with the Balthasar Neumann Choir and Ensemble.

At the 2004 Schwetzingen Festival, Thomas Hengelbrock and soloists from the Balthasar Neumann Choir and Ensemble appeared with "Lettera amorosa", a musical play based on madrigals by Don Carlo Gesualdo and Claudio Monteverdi, and directed by Matthias Schönfeldt. Shortly thereafter, Thomas Hengelbrock presented his interpretation, on historical instruments, of Verdi's Rigoletto in Baden-Baden's Festspielhaus, directed by Philippe Arlaud.

In 2005 Thomas Hengelbrock and Balthasar Neumann Choir and Ensemble are making their debut at the Opéra National de Paris with Gluck's Orphée et Euridice (choreography: Pina Bausch).

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