Wolfgang Trommer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wolfgang Trommer (10 July 1927 – 13 September 2018) was a German conductor and academic teacher.
Born in Wuppertal,[1] Trommer attended the Musisches Gymnasium Frankfurt until the end of the war in 1945.[2] He enjoyed a profound musical education at this school which, under the responsible direction of Kurt Thomas, looked after a large number of highly musical pupils, popularly known as "Musensöhne" (sons of the Muses), and gave them a broad and intensive basic musical knowledge. Many of the school graduates later went on to great careers, for example Alfred Koerppen, Helmut Kretschmar, Wolfgang Pasquay and Siegfried Strohbach. Some followed their teacher to the newly founded Northwest German Music Academy Detmold in 1946.
Trommer belonged to this circle of students. He first took conducting lessons with Günter Wand in Cologne before following Kurt Thomas to the Detmold Academy. There, in addition to piano, he studied choral conducting (with Kurt Thomas) and orchestral conducting (with Rolf Agop). In collaboration with Frederik Husler, the director of a Detmold master class for singing, Trommer built up an opera school in Husler's dependence in Steinhude am Meer. This activity provided him with a broad knowledge of the opera repertoire at an early stage.
In the summer of 1949, Trommer passed his academic matriculation examination in Detmold. His examination workload included the preparation and performance of a public concert with the Detmold Municipal Orchestra as well as rehearsals and performance of the Handel opera Acis and Galathea with soloists, choir and orchestra of the university.
Theatre
Trommer worked for six years as Kapellmeister at the Dortmund Opera House from 1949. From 1955, he was 1st Kapellmeister at the Staatsoper Hannover for a further six years. During these twelve years, he developed and conducted an extensive opera repertoire.
In 1961, he moved to the Theater Aachen, where he was appointed Generalmusikdirektor in 1962,[3][1] succeeding Hans Walter Kämpfel – at the theatre where Herbert von Karajan's rise had once begun and where, in the 1950s, Wolfgang Sawallisch conducted the Sinfonieorchester Aachen.[4]
Trommer devoted himself to this task in Aachen for 12 years. In opera, he continuously built up an opera ensemble with young singers, some of whom achieved world fame. Each season he produced an opera of the modern classical repertoire together with the renowned director Hans Hartleb, among others Wozzeck, Lulu, Cardillac, Karl V. and Der junge Lord,[3] which were enthusiastically received by the audience. Another focus was on operas by Mozart and Richard Strauss.
In addition to the great classical-romantic repertoire, the concert programme also included works of classical modernism as well as performances of younger composers. A major concern for him was the continuous work with the Municipal Choir, with which he regularly performed at the Eifel Music Festival in Steinfeld Abbey in addition to the concerts in Aachen. One focus of the programmes was on the works of Anton Bruckner.
