Tölzer Knabenchor
The Tölzer Knabenchor (Tölz boy choir) is a colorful and famous boy choir with roots in the Bavarian town of Bad Tölz.
The choir group is still led by director and singing master Gerhard Schmidt-Gaden, who founded the choir in 1956 when he was only nineteen years old. The founder was once a student of Carl Orff's and worked with him a few years. At the outset, the group was composed of 170 boys divided into several separate choirs. Children are admitted for entrance trials from second grade from schools in the Munich area. The choir is not affiliated with any boarding school. The children are tutored in choir and individual lessons in Munich, and so their enthusiasm and passion for music is awakened.
The repertoire covers vocal music from the medieval to the modern, folk music, madrigals and motets, church music from the baroque to the classical, solo roles and opera for childrens' choirs. Members of the choir have played the "Three boys" in Mozart's Der Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) in numerous productions, and for that the group is already legendary.
The choir has already undertaken numerous concert tours around the world, including countries such as Japan, China, Israel, and the United States. The choir has sung in scores of festivals, among others including the Bayreuth Festival, the Salzburg Festival, the Vienna Week Festival, and the Edinburgh International Festival.
The choir has already sung with leading orchestras, like the Berlin Philharmonic, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Dresden Staatskapelle, and the Vienna Philharmonic. There the choir was also conducted by world-renowned conductors such as Claudio Abbado, Leonard Berstein, Karl Böhm, Benjamin Britten, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Sir Colin Davis, Herbert von Karajan, Rafael Kubelik, James Levine, Lorin Maazel, Sir Neville Marriner, Sir Georg Solti, and Bruno Weil.
The choirs recruit most of their members from Munich, but still get some boys from the smaller town of Bad Tölz.
The group is actually composed of several choirs. Together, they or their individual members give more than 250 concerts and opera performances a year in many parts of the world, including countries such as Japan, China, Israel, and the USA, and multitudinous festivals. The choir has worked with many of the big names in orchestras under world-class directors.
The choir is run from Schmidt-Gaden's office in Drygalski-Allee in Munich.
The choir will perform a 50th anniversary concert on Friday, 2 June 2006 in the Franziskanerkirche in Bad Tölz. Bach motets, BWV 225-230 are the scheduled pieces.
Discography
The Tölzer Knabenchor has recorded numerous classical works, such as pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach, Benjamin Britten, Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Heinrich Schütz, Carl Orff, Gustav Mahler and Robert Schumann.
Some of the choirs' most popular recordings:
- Der Tölzer Knabenchor singt seine größten Erfolge
- Frühling-Sommer-Herbst u. Winter
- Der Tölzer Knabenchor singt seine schönsten Volkslieder
- Lieder der Alpen
- Das Wandern ist des Müllers Lust
- Volkslieder mit Robert Stolz
- Volkslieder mit Herman Prey
- Hoppe Hoppe Reiter - Die schönsten Kinderlieder
- Altbayerische Weihnacht
- Bergweihnacht
- Ihr Kinderlein kommet/s´Christkind kommt bald
See also
External links
- Official home page (German) with a concert schedule
- The Wikipedia article (German) is extensively cross-referenced and gives a list of festivals the choirs have attended and famous orchestras and directors they have worked with
- Vituelis's home page (German) contains a wide array of pictures from concerts
- The boy-choir article from Almost Angels provides a 1983 telecast of Land der Lieder for download
- A video of Robin Schlotz singing "Der Hoelle Racht kocht in meinem Herzen" from Mozart's Der Zauberflöte in Flash and WMV formats
This page uses material from the Wikipedia article Tölzer Knabenchor.
