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The German organist, conductor, composer and arranger, Heribert Breuer, studied with, among others, Helmuth Rilling, Hanns Martin Schneidt, Ernst Pepping and Bernd Alois Zimmermann in Heidelberg, Berlin and Cologne.
At the beginning of his career, which Heribert Breuer began in 1968 as a 23-year-old at the Hauptkirche St. Aegidien in Lübeck, the focus of his work was in the field of choir conducting and composition: He founded the Lübecker Bach-Chor and published his first compositions.
His path led him via Würzburg (1974 to 1979 Artistic Director of the Würzburger Bachtage) to Aachen, where he was also Artistic Director of the Aachener Bachverein and the Aachener Bachtage. From 1982 to 2010, he was appointed Professor for choral conducting and counterpoint at the Universität der Künste Berlin. From 1991 to 2002 he was the organist and director of music at Matthäuskirche im Kulturforum.
In 1991, for the 1st Bachwoche St. Matthäus, Heribert Breuer founded the Berliner Bach Akademie, an ensemble that professionally corresponds to his ideas of interpretation and sound. Concert tours as organist and conductor took Heribert Breuer to all Western European countries, the USA and Latin America. He is particularly interested in the Spanish-speaking countries, where he has not only given concerts as an organist and guest conductor, but also gave courses at music colleges in Spain, Brazil, Argentina and Central America. In 2016 he played in Sevilla and Malaga. He and the Berliner Bach Akademie were invited to many important festivals as Schleswig Holstein Musik Festival and Rheingau Musikfestival. The focus of his repertoire is J.S. Bach.
His artistic actitivity appoints also in the domain as arranger of music from J.S. Bach, W.A. Mozart and composers of romanticism. Meanwhile he distinguished with an immense number of adaptations for different instrumentations. The most popular ones are his version of the Arpeggione-Sonate of Franz Schubert (violoncello, windquintet) and J.S. Bach's Die Kunst der Fuge BWV 1080 for four quartets. His versions are inspired arrangements, often supplemented by more voices and they truly reflect the spirit of the compositions. His version of the last Contrapunctus of Die Kunst der Fuge BWV 1080 was performed at the opening of the Bachfest Leipzig in the Thomaskirche. Breuer's arrangement of the Goldberg Variations BWV 988 for septet (string trio, woodwind trio and harp) was recently recorded by Deutschlandradio Kultur.
Heribert Breuer was decorated as conductor with the Bavarian National Award. As composer he got the Villa Massimo-Scholarship in Rome and the Villa-Serpentara-Scholarship of the Berlin Academy of fine Arts. |
