Michael Obst (born 30 November 1955) is a German composer and pianist.
Obst was born in Frankfurt am Main. He studied music education from 1973 to 1978 in Mainz, and from 1977 to 1982 studied piano with Alfons Kontarsky and Aloys Kontarsky at the Hochschule für Musik Köln, where he sat his piano examination in 1982. At the same time, between 1979 and 1986, he studied composition with Hans Ulrich Humpert in the Studio for Elektronic Music of the Hochschule für Musik Köln. From 1981 to 1992 he was the pianist and a founding member of the Ensemble Modern, from 1986 to 1989 he worked as an interpreter with Karlheinz Stockhausen, playing synthesizer in Stockhausen’s operatic cycle Licht. [1]
He was invited to the Studios of Ghent (IPEM), Stockholm (EMS), Bourges (Groupe de musique expérimentale de Bourges), Paris (IRCAM), and Freiburg (SWF-Heinrich Strobel Stiftung) as well as to the Studio for Electronic Music of the Westdeutscher Rundfunk in Cologne. At IRCAM he realized the electronics for his chamber opera Solaris (to a libretto by Stanisław Lem); the opera received its première at the Munich Biennale in 1996. Since 1997 he has been professor of composition at the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt in Weimar. [1]
From 2010 to 2013 he was a guest professor for composition at the University of Music and performing Arts in Vienna.
In works such as Solaris, Obst adopts a modernist sensibility while at the same time questioning its underlying philosophy. [2]
| World Première | Title | Description | Libretto and source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4 Dec 1996, Muffathalle/ Munich Biennale | Solaris | Chamber opera in 3 parts with an overture and an intermezzo, 90' | the composer, after the novel by Stanislaw Lem |
| 10 Jul 1999, Nationaltheater Weimar | Caroline | Opera in two parts | Ralph Günther Mohnnau after the life of Caroline Schelling |
| 25 Sep 2010, Mainfranken Theater Würzburg | Die andere Seite | Opera | Hermann Schneider, after the novel The Other Side by Alfred Kubin |
| 21 May 2022 Landestheater Linz (Austria) | Under the Glacier | Opera in three parts, a prologue and an epilogue | Hermann Schneider, after the novel Kristnihald under Jökli by Halldór Laxness |
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