Torsten Rasch (born 1965 in Dresden) is a German composer of contemporary classical music. He lives in Berlin, but has found moderate success in the UK. [1]
Torsten Rasch (born 1965 in Dresden) is a German composer of contemporary classical music. He lives in Berlin, but has found moderate success in the UK. [1]
Torsten Rasch was born in Dresden in 1965 and began piano lessons at the age of six. From 1974-82 he was a member of the renowned Dresdner Kreuzchor and subsequently went on to study composition and piano at the Carl Maria von Weber College of Music in Dresden. In 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, he emigrated to Japan and established himself as a successful composer of film and TV scores, completing over 40 to date. Following an orchestral commission in 1999 from the Dresdner Sinfoniker [ de ] (Völuspa-Der Seherin Gesicht for narrator and orchestra), Rasch was approached once again by the orchestra in 2002 for a commissioned song-cycle based on music and lyrics by the German industrial metal band Rammstein. [2]
Deutsche Grammophon recorded and released the disc of the resultant 65-minute cycle Mein Herz brennt with bass René Pape, voice Katharina Thalbach and the Dresden Sinfoniker conducted by John Carewe. This followed premiere performances of the work in Dresden and Berlin in late 2003. In 2004 the disc was released in Japan and the USA, and was awarded Best World Premiere Recording at the Echo Classical Awards in Munich. In March 2006 the work was performed at the Helsinki Musica Nova to great acclaim. Later that same year, Rasch was commissioned by the ICA in London to collaborate with the Pet Shop Boys on a soundtrack for Sergei Eisenstein's silent film Battleship Potemkin and a live, screened performance took place in London's Trafalgar Square. [2]
Meanwhile, interest in his music grew in Great Britain when he was taken up by the publisher Faber Music, London. A Piano Trio commissioned by the BBC for the 2006 Cheltenham Festival received highly appreciative reviews; an orchestral commission for the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Kurt Masur produced Wouivres. In May 2009 Vladimir Jurowski and the LPO introduced Mein Herz brennt to London, this time with the original cast of René Pape and Katharina Thalbach. In Germany his first opera, Rotter, based on a play by East German dissident Thomas Brasch, was commissioned by Cologne Opera and received its world premiere in February 2008 in a production directed by Katherina Thalbach. A new short orchestral work, Excantare fruges was premiered in Dresden by the Dresden Sinfoniker under Olari Elts in September that year. UK performances include two commissions instigated by Andreas Haefliger for the Two Moors Festival – which resulted in a setting of Oskar Kokoschka's poem Die Träumenden Knaben using a 'Pierrot' group of players, and a String Quartet for the Kuss Quartet. These took place in September 2009. [2] In 2012, the work was revised and a performing translation into English ("The Dreaming Boys") was produced by Dr Lee Tsang while he was lecturer at University of Hull (he is now Head of Classical Music Performance at University of Liverpool) and published by Faber. The English performing translation was premiered by the Portumnus Ensemble (now Sinfonia UK Collective) at the University.
Rasch’s most recent project was a commission from English National Opera and Punchdrunk - a setting of The Duchess of Malfi – which was given sold-out performances in July 2010 in a dis-used office block in London’s docklands. [2]
Richard Georg Strauss was a German composer and conductor best known for his tone poems and operas. Considered a leading composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras, he has been described as a successor of Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt. Along with Gustav Mahler, he represents the late flowering of German Romanticism, in which pioneering subtleties of orchestration are combined with an advanced harmonic style.
Thomas Joseph Edmund Adès is a British composer, pianist and conductor. Five compositions by Adès received votes in the 2017 Classic Voice poll of the greatest works of art music since 2000: The Tempest (2004), Violin Concerto (2005), Tevot (2007), In Seven Days (2008), and Polaris (2010).
Julian Anderson is a British composer and teacher of composition.
Colin Matthews, OBE is an English composer of contemporary classical music. Noted for his large-scale orchestral compositions, Matthews is also a prolific arranger of other composer's music, including works by Berlioz, Britten, Dowland, Mahler, Purcell and Schubert. Other arrangements include orchestrations of all Debussy's 24 Préludes, both books of Debussy's Images, and two movements—Oiseaux tristes and La vallée des cloches—from Ravel's Miroirs. Having received a doctorate from University of Sussex on the works of Mahler, from 1964–1975 Matthews worked with his brother David Matthews and musicologist Deryck Cooke on completing a performance version of Mahler's Tenth Symphony.
Battleship Potemkin is a 2005 album of electronic and orchestral music written by Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe of Pet Shop Boys, to accompany the 1925 silent film Battleship Potemkin by Sergei Eisenstein. It is performed by Tennant, Lowe and the Dresdner Sinfoniker, conducted by Jonathan Stockhammer, with orchestrations by Torsten Rasch. The album was released under the name Tennant/Lowe, as Tennant and Lowe are the composers. The album is produced by the Pet Shop Boys and Sven Helbig.
Paul Schoenfield, also spelled Paul Schoenfeld or Pinchas Schoenfeld, is a classical composer. He is known for combining popular, folk, and classical music forms.
Gurre-Lieder is a tripartite oratorio followed by a melodramatic epilogue for five vocal soloists, narrator, three choruses and grand orchestra. The work, which is based on an early song cycle for soprano, tenor and piano, was composed by the then-Austrian composer Arnold Schönberg from 1900 to 1903. Following a break he resumed orchestration in 1910 and completed it in November of 1911. It sets to music the poem cycle Gurresange by the Danish novelist Jens Peter Jacobsen.
René Pape is a German operatic bass. Pape has received two Grammys, was named "Vocalist of the Year" by Musical America in 2002, "Artist of the Year" by the German opera critics in 2006, and won an ECHO award in 2009.
Udo Zimmermann was a German composer, musicologist, opera director, and conductor. He worked as a professor of composition, founded a centre for contemporary music in Dresden, and was director of the Leipzig Opera and the Deutsche Oper Berlin. He directed a contemporary music series for the Bayerischer Rundfunk and a European centre of the arts in Hellerau. His operas, especially Weiße Rose, on a topic he set to music twice, have been performed internationally, and recorded.
Svitlana Azarova is a Ukrainian-Dutch composer of contemporary classical music, originally from the Ukrainian SSR.
Sven Helbig is a German composer, director and music producer. He composes orchestral, chamber and choral music. Beside this, he is active in the field of electronic music. Helbig's versatility has made him a much sought-after producer for crossover projects; he has worked as a producer, composer and arranger with Rammstein, Pet Shop Boys, Snoop Dogg, the Fauré Quartet, cellist Jan Vogler, opera singer René Pape, pianist Olga Scheps and more. Helbig's work builds on the tradition of the Gesamtkunstwerk and he often takes responsibility for concept, music and production at the same time.
English National Opera (ENO) is an opera company based in London, resident at the London Coliseum in St Martin's Lane. It is one of the two principal opera companies in London, along with the Royal Opera, Covent Garden. ENO's productions are sung in English. The company, formerly known as Sadler's Wells Opera, has long had a policy of commissioning new works, and has staged many world and British premieres.
La casa disabitata is a comic opera in one act composed by Princess Amalie of Saxony to her own Italian-language libretto. It was first performed in the court theatre of Pillnitz Castle in Dresden on 17 September 1835. The opera had no further performances until it was revived in 2012 as part of the Dresden Music Festival after its manuscript score was found in a Moscow library.
Andrew Watts is a British classical countertenor.
Stephen Higgins is a British conductor, accompanist, arranger, and presenter.
Frank Beermann is a German conductor. He was Generalmusikdirektor (GMD) at the Chemnitz Opera for several years, and has worked freelance at international opera houses from 2012. He has conducted premieres and recordings of rarely performed operas and orchestral works.
Karl Panzner was a German conductor and musikdirektor in Düsseldorf.
Silvia Weiss is a German operatic and concert soprano.
George Washington Pittrich was a German composer and Kapellmeister.
Christian Kluttig is a German conductor, pianist and Hochschullehrer. From 1979 to 1990, he was chief conductor of the Orchester des Opernhauses Halle. Appointed General Music Director in 1983, he worked as such at the theatres in Halle (Saale) and Theater Koblenz. The Handel interpreter rendered special services to the implementation of Historically informed performance in the Saale city, which made him one of the most important protagonists in this field in the GDR. He also devoted himself to Neue Musik, premiering Reiner Bredemeyer's opera Candide.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| Artists | |
