Helmut Franz

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

Helmut Franz was a German conductor and teacher, best known as a choral conductor. He was born in 1911 and died on 30 January 2002. He worked as Kapellmeister at the Hessisches Landestheater in Darmstadt and taught there at the Akademie für Tonkunst. In 1966 he became head of the NDR Chor in Hamburg, the choir of the broadcaster Norddeutscher Rundfunk. He succeeded Max Thurn and remained until 1987.

Music and breakthrough

Franz focused the choir on a cappella music and on contemporary music. He began the concert series das neue werk. In 1967 he conducted Lux aeterna by György Ligeti, a piece for sixteen-part unaccompanied choir. That recording became known as music in Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey and was released in 1968 in the Avantgarde collection of Deutsche Grammophon. Under his direction came premières of Penderecki's Utrenja and of Hans Werner Henze's Das Floß der Medusa, in 1968, a performance that was interrupted by political protest in the hall.

Influence

Franz saw a broadcasting choir as a group of specialists who sing modern works that other choirs cannot manage for lack of time or ability. In the 1970s the choir was a guest at festivals, including with Stockhausen's Atmen gibt das Leben. He was also a professor of opera in Hamburg.

Listening

Discography

Studio albums

• 1968Bedford: Two Poems for Chorus / Ligeti: Lux aeterna / Mellnäs: Succsim / Kopelent: Matka
• 1971Sylvano Bussotti: Cinque frammenti all’Italia / Nicolaus A. Huber: Versuch über Sprache