Michael Herrmann
Encyclopedia
Michael Herrmann is a German culture and music administrator. He founded the Rheingau Musik Festival
in 1987 and is its Artistic Director and Chief Executive Officer.
, he recalled that he was an altar boy at the church in Wiesbaden where Zender was the organist. In the 1960s, Herrmann attended the Pablo Casals Festival in Prades
three times. Meeting important chamber musicians there, later singing in choral concerts in Eberbach Abbey
in the early 1970s, inspired the idea of a music festival in the Rheingau
.
Herrmann, who first learned bookselling, turned to tourism and worked in the Canary Islands
for ten years. He met Christoph Eschenbach
, Justus Frantz
, Jürgen Ponto
, Helmut Schmidt
, Will Quadflieg
and Leonard Bernstein
. He returned to Germany in 1982 and worked for concert agencies. In 1985 he founded his own artists and concert agency. He founded the Rheingau Musik Festival
and, together with Tatiana von Metternich, Walter Fink
and others, created in 1987 the Rheingau Musik Festival e.V. as an association which ran the festival until 1992, and has continued to support the festival. In 2010, it had 3300 members. Herrmann won sponsors who choose to fund their own concerts. It is normal for him to contact three to four sponsors a day. 180 companies have sponsored the festival. About half of the budget is funded by the sponsors and the remainder by ticket sales. Herrmann was successful in keeping the festival independent of public funding, but the minister-president of Hesse
is its patron. Since 1992 the festival has been run by a GmbH
(company with limited liability), with Herrmann as partner and managing director (Gesellschafter und Geschäftsführer). The festival has grown from 19 concerts in the two months of the first season to an average of 150 events each season, many of them in the Rheingau's vineyards and historical buildings, making the festival "one of the largest in Europe". Herrmann made the festival a member of the European Festivals Association
and serves as the association's vice president.
The program is mostly dedicated to classical music
, but also features cabaret, jazz, readings, musical cruises, children's concerts, wine tastings and culinary events with music. It is regularly opened by a symphony concert in Eberbach Abbey
, broadcast live by Hessischer Rundfunk
. Anniversaries of composers are celebrated, such as Giuseppe Verdi ("Viva Verdi") in 2001, and Franz Liszt
and Gustav Mahler
in 2011. Every year it has a theme, such as "Heimweh
" in 2011. "Treffpunkt Jugend" (meeting point youth) presents soloists still in their teens in two marathon concerts of chamber music and concertos with orchestra. Work cycles, running over several years, have included the piano sonatas of Ludwig van Beethoven
, played by Rudolf Buchbinder
, and the symphonies of Anton Bruckner
, with the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne
and Eliahu Inbal
. "Rendezvous" shows artists in dialogue. In the Rheingau, a traditionally Catholic region, the feast of the Assumption
is celebrated on 15 August by a Marienvesper (Vespers
for the Virgin Mary). In 2011 the Concerto Romano ensemble
, conducted by Alessandro Quarta, performed a medley of works by composers from Rome. On this occasion, Hermann asked for an exceptional collection to benefit his guest of honor, bishop Ambroise
of the diocese of Maradi in Niger
. Organ concert on the historic instruments of the region are featured regularly. "Komponistenporträt" features annually a living composer in conversation, chamber music and symphonic music. Herrmann got Anne-Sophie Mutter
to perform the German premiere of Wolfgang Rihm
's violin concerto Lichtes Spiel, premiered in Avery Fisher Hall
in 2010. He gave Andreas Scholl
, born in the Rheingau, the opportunity to perform with friends and his sister Elisabeth
in four of the area's historic churches. The festival usually concludes with a choral concert in Eberbach Abbey, including rarely performed works. In 2005 Frieder Bernius conducted Penderecki
's Polish Requiem
, Helmuth Rilling
conducted Messa per Rossini
in 2001 and Messiah of both Sven-David Sandström
and Handel
in 2009.
. Since 2005 Herrmann has been vice president of the Association Européenne des Festivals. Since 2008 he has been director of the Pro Arte Konzertdirektion in Frankfurt
.
Rheingau Musik Festival
The Rheingau Musik Festival is an international summer music festival in Germany, founded in 1987. It is mostly for classical music, but includes other genres...
in 1987 and is its Artistic Director and Chief Executive Officer.
Professional career
When Herrmann announced in 2011 the first concert of the Rheingau Musik Festival's annual composer's portrait, featuring Hans ZenderHans Zender
Johannes Wolfgang Zender is a German conductor and composer.-Life:From 1956 to 1959 Zender studied piano, conducting, and composition at the Hochschule für Musik Frankfurt and at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg.From 1959 to 1963 he was Kapellmeister of the Municipal Theatres in Freiburg im...
, he recalled that he was an altar boy at the church in Wiesbaden where Zender was the organist. In the 1960s, Herrmann attended the Pablo Casals Festival in Prades
Prades
-Places:* Prades, Ardèche, in the Ardèche département, France* Prades, Ariège, in the Ariège département, France* Prades, Haute-Loire, in the Haute-Loire département, France...
three times. Meeting important chamber musicians there, later singing in choral concerts in Eberbach Abbey
Eberbach Abbey
Eberbach Abbey is a former Cistercian monastery near Eltville am Rhein in the Rheingau, Germany. On account of its impressive Romanesque and early Gothic buildings it is considered one of the most significant architectural heritage sites in Hesse, Germany...
in the early 1970s, inspired the idea of a music festival in the Rheingau
Rheingau (wine region)
Rheingau is one of 13 German wine regions for quality wines . Named for the traditional region of Rheingau , the wine region is situated in the state of Hesse, where it makes up part of the Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis administrative district...
.
Herrmann, who first learned bookselling, turned to tourism and worked in the Canary Islands
Canary Islands
The Canary Islands , also known as the Canaries , is a Spanish archipelago located just off the northwest coast of mainland Africa, 100 km west of the border between Morocco and the Western Sahara. The Canaries are a Spanish autonomous community and an outermost region of the European Union...
for ten years. He met Christoph Eschenbach
Christoph Eschenbach
Christoph Eschenbach , born February 20, 1940, Breslau, Germany is a German-born pianist and conductor. He currently holds positions in Washington, D.C. as music director of the National Symphony Orchestra and music director of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.-Early...
, Justus Frantz
Justus Frantz
Justus Frantz is a German pianist, conductor, and television personality.- Life :...
, Jürgen Ponto
Jürgen Ponto
Jürgen Ponto, was a German banker and chairman of the Dresdner Bank board of directors. Previously, he had worked as a lawyer...
, Helmut Schmidt
Helmut Schmidt
Helmut Heinrich Waldemar Schmidt is a German Social Democratic politician who served as Chancellor of West Germany from 1974 to 1982. Prior to becoming chancellor, he had served as Minister of Defence and Minister of Finance. He had also served briefly as Minister of Economics and as acting...
, Will Quadflieg
Will Quadflieg
Friedrich Wilhelm "Will" Quadflieg was a German actor from Oberhausen. He was the father of actor Christian Quadflieg. He is considered one of Germany's best post-war actors. One of his most widely recognized roles was in the title role in the 1960 film Faust. He also starred in a number of other...
and Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...
. He returned to Germany in 1982 and worked for concert agencies. In 1985 he founded his own artists and concert agency. He founded the Rheingau Musik Festival
Rheingau Musik Festival
The Rheingau Musik Festival is an international summer music festival in Germany, founded in 1987. It is mostly for classical music, but includes other genres...
and, together with Tatiana von Metternich, Walter Fink
Walter Fink
Walter Fink is a German retired executive and a patron of Contemporary music. He is mostly known for being a founding member, Executive Committee member and sponsor of the Rheingau Musik Festival.- Biography :...
and others, created in 1987 the Rheingau Musik Festival e.V. as an association which ran the festival until 1992, and has continued to support the festival. In 2010, it had 3300 members. Herrmann won sponsors who choose to fund their own concerts. It is normal for him to contact three to four sponsors a day. 180 companies have sponsored the festival. About half of the budget is funded by the sponsors and the remainder by ticket sales. Herrmann was successful in keeping the festival independent of public funding, but the minister-president of Hesse
Hesse
Hesse or Hessia is both a cultural region of Germany and the name of an individual German state.* The cultural region of Hesse includes both the State of Hesse and the area known as Rhenish Hesse in the neighbouring Rhineland-Palatinate state...
is its patron. Since 1992 the festival has been run by a GmbH
Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung
Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung is a type of legal entityvery common in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and other Central European countries...
(company with limited liability), with Herrmann as partner and managing director (Gesellschafter und Geschäftsführer). The festival has grown from 19 concerts in the two months of the first season to an average of 150 events each season, many of them in the Rheingau's vineyards and historical buildings, making the festival "one of the largest in Europe". Herrmann made the festival a member of the European Festivals Association
European Festivals Association
The European Festivals Association or EFA is an umbrella group for various festivals in Europe and other countries. It supports artistic cooperation among festivals and offers programs for new festival and artistic managers...
and serves as the association's vice president.
The program is mostly dedicated to classical music
Classical music
Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...
, but also features cabaret, jazz, readings, musical cruises, children's concerts, wine tastings and culinary events with music. It is regularly opened by a symphony concert in Eberbach Abbey
Eberbach Abbey
Eberbach Abbey is a former Cistercian monastery near Eltville am Rhein in the Rheingau, Germany. On account of its impressive Romanesque and early Gothic buildings it is considered one of the most significant architectural heritage sites in Hesse, Germany...
, broadcast live by Hessischer Rundfunk
Hessischer Rundfunk
Hessischer Rundfunk is the public broadcaster for the German state of Hesse. The main offices of HR are in Frankfurt am Main. HR is a member of the ARD.- Studios :...
. Anniversaries of composers are celebrated, such as Giuseppe Verdi ("Viva Verdi") in 2001, and Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...
and Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then Austria-Hungary, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic...
in 2011. Every year it has a theme, such as "Heimweh
Homesickness
Homesickness is the distress or impairment caused by an actual or anticipated separation from the specific home environment or attachment objects....
" in 2011. "Treffpunkt Jugend" (meeting point youth) presents soloists still in their teens in two marathon concerts of chamber music and concertos with orchestra. Work cycles, running over several years, have included the piano sonatas of Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
, played by Rudolf Buchbinder
Rudolf Buchbinder
Rudolf Buchbinder is an Austrian classical pianist.-Biography:Buchbinder studied with Bruno Seidlhofer at the Vienna Academy of Music. In 1965 he made a tour of North and South America. In 1966 he won a special prize awarded at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition...
, and the symphonies of Anton Bruckner
Anton Bruckner
Anton Bruckner was an Austrian composer known for his symphonies, masses, and motets. The first are considered emblematic of the final stage of Austro-German Romanticism because of their rich harmonic language, complex polyphony, and considerable length...
, with the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne
WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne
The WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne is a German orchestra based in Cologne. The orchestra was founded in 1947 by Allied occupation authorities after World War II, as the orchestra of Nordwestdeutschen Rundfunk . The orchestra later acquired the names of the Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra and...
and Eliahu Inbal
Eliahu Inbal
Eliahu Inbal is an Israeli conductor.Inbal studied violin at the Israeli Academy of Music and took composition lessons with Paul Ben-Haim...
. "Rendezvous" shows artists in dialogue. In the Rheingau, a traditionally Catholic region, the feast of the Assumption
Assumption of Mary
According to the belief of Christians of the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, and parts of the Anglican Communion and Continuing Anglicanism, the Assumption of Mary was the bodily taking up of the Virgin Mary into Heaven at the end of her life...
is celebrated on 15 August by a Marienvesper (Vespers
Vespers
Vespers is the evening prayer service in the Western Catholic, Eastern Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, and Lutheran liturgies of the canonical hours...
for the Virgin Mary). In 2011 the Concerto Romano ensemble
Musical ensemble
A musical ensemble is a group of people who perform instrumental or vocal music. In classical music, trios or quartets either blend the sounds of musical instrument families or group together instruments from the same instrument family, such as string ensembles or wind ensembles...
, conducted by Alessandro Quarta, performed a medley of works by composers from Rome. On this occasion, Hermann asked for an exceptional collection to benefit his guest of honor, bishop Ambroise
Ambroise Ouédraogo
Ambroise Ouédraogo has been the Roman Catholic bishop of the Diocese of Maradi since 2001. Ouédraogo was the first Nigerien bishop in the Roman Catholic Church....
of the diocese of Maradi in Niger
Niger
Niger , officially named the Republic of Niger, is a landlocked country in Western Africa, named after the Niger River. It borders Nigeria and Benin to the south, Burkina Faso and Mali to the west, Algeria and Libya to the north and Chad to the east...
. Organ concert on the historic instruments of the region are featured regularly. "Komponistenporträt" features annually a living composer in conversation, chamber music and symphonic music. Herrmann got Anne-Sophie Mutter
Anne-Sophie Mutter
Anne-Sophie Mutter is a German violinist.- Early life :Mutter was born in Rheinfelden, Germany. She began playing the piano at age five, and shortly afterwards took up the violin, studying with Erna Honigberger, a pupil of Carl Flesch...
to perform the German premiere of Wolfgang Rihm
Wolfgang Rihm
Wolfgang Rihm is a German composer.Rihm is Head of the Institute of Modern Music at the Karlsruhe Conservatory of Music and has been composer in residence at the Lucerne Festival and the Salzburg Festival...
's violin concerto Lichtes Spiel, premiered in Avery Fisher Hall
Avery Fisher Hall
Avery Fisher Hall is a concert hall, in New York City and is part of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts complex. It is the home of the New York Philharmonic, with a capacity of 2,738 seats.-History:...
in 2010. He gave Andreas Scholl
Andreas Scholl
Andreas Scholl is a German countertenor, a male classical singer in the alto vocal range. He is noted as a specialist in Baroque music.-Childhood:...
, born in the Rheingau, the opportunity to perform with friends and his sister Elisabeth
Elisabeth Scholl
- Professional career :Elisabeth Scholl was the first girl to sing with the boys choir Kiedricher Chorbuben. From 1982 to 1987 she sang the role of the First Boy in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte at the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden...
in four of the area's historic churches. The festival usually concludes with a choral concert in Eberbach Abbey, including rarely performed works. In 2005 Frieder Bernius conducted Penderecki
Krzysztof Penderecki
Krzysztof Penderecki , born November 23, 1933 in Dębica) is a Polish composer and conductor. His 1960 avant-garde Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima for string orchestra brought him to international attention, and this success was followed by acclaim for his choral St. Luke Passion. Both these...
's Polish Requiem
Polish Requiem
Polish Requiem is a large scale Requiem Mass for soloists, mixed choir and orchestra by Krzysztof Penderecki, originally composed between 1980 and 1984, revised and expanded in 1993, and expanded again in 2005 with the additional movement, Ciaccona...
, Helmuth Rilling
Helmuth Rilling
Helmuth Rilling is an internationally known German choral conductor, founder of the Gächinger Kantorei , the Bach-Collegium Stuttgart , the Oregon Bach Festival , the Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart and other Bach Academies worldwide, and the "Festival Ensemble Stuttgart"...
conducted Messa per Rossini
Messa per Rossini
The Messa per Rossini is a Requiem Mass composed to commemorate the first anniversary of Gioachino Rossini's death. It was a collaboration between 13 Italian composers, initiated by Giuseppe Verdi...
in 2001 and Messiah of both Sven-David Sandström
Sven-David Sandström
Sven-David Sandström is a Swedish composer best known for his compositions operas, oratorios, battets, and choral works, as well as orchestral works.Sandström studied art history and musicology at Stockholm University...
and Handel
Messiah (Handel)
Messiah is an English-language oratorio composed in 1741 by George Frideric Handel, with a scriptural text compiled by Charles Jennens from the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. It was first performed in Dublin on 13 April 1742, and received its London premiere nearly a year later...
in 2009.
Awards
In 1997 Herrmann was awarded the Hessian Order of Merit, and in 2002 received the Goethe Plaque, the highest award of the Hessian Ministry for Science and the ArtsHessian Ministry for Science and the Arts
The Hessian Ministry for Science and the Arts is a university and culture ministry in Hesse, Germany.- History :The Hessian Ministry for Science and Art was established on 4 July 1984 as a spin-off of the Hessian Ministry of Education...
. Since 2005 Herrmann has been vice president of the Association Européenne des Festivals. Since 2008 he has been director of the Pro Arte Konzertdirektion in Frankfurt
Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...
.
External links
- Wenig Subvention und große Klassik Manuel Brug, Die WeltDie WeltDie Welt is a German national daily newspaper published by the Axel Springer AG company.It was founded in Hamburg in 1946 by the British occupying forces, aiming to provide a "quality newspaper" modelled on The Times...
, 4 July 2011 - Michael Herrmann / Intendant und Geschäftsführer des Rheingau Musik Festivals dib-ag.de
- Biographie Michael Herrmann - Schatzmeister Association of German Concert Agencies