Detlev Glanert

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Detlev Glanert is a German opera composer, born in 1960 in Hamburg, who also wrote a great deal of work for chamber and symphony orchestra, including three symphonies. He came to music late: he learned to play the trumpet at the age of eleven and only began his composition studies in his twenties, with Diether de la Motte and Günther Friedrichs, among others. He also studied for four years with Hans Werner Henze. In 1972 he saw his first operas in Hamburg, Die Zauberflöte and Die Soldaten, and from that moment he loved opera.

Music and breakthrough

At Henze's invitation he wrote his first major piece of music theatre, Leyla und Medjun, for the first Munich Biennale. His breakthrough came in 1995 with the opera Der Spiegel des großen Kaisers, which received the Rolf Liebermann Prize. In 1999 the premiere of Joseph Süß followed, and in 2006 Caligula, based on the play by Albert Camus, was staged in Frankfurt. Glanert became a member of the Freie Akademie der Künste in Hamburg.

Influence

He seeks contact with the audience. Music should say something about the life of the listener, he believes. Usually he takes a familiar story and gives it a contemporary twist. In Caligula the emperor is not mad but cruel by free choice. His style emerged somewhere between Mahler and Ravel, after he had first worked for three years in Henze's shadow. He also arranged Brahms, such as the Vier ernste Gesänge.

Listening

Discography

Studio albums

• 2016Brahms-Glanert: Four Serious Songs / Brahms-Berio: Clarinet Sonata no. 1 / Glanert: Weites Land