Helmut Kretschmar

Helmut Kretschmar ( born February 3, 1928 in Kleve ) is a German concert and oratorio singer of the vocal range tenor vocals and emeritus professor at the Hochschule für Musik Detmold.

Training

Helmut Kretschmar studied at the Arts High School in Frankfurt am Main with Kurt Thomas and Hans Emge, then at Frederick Husler at the Musikhochschule in Detmold. In 1953 he was awarded the first prize in the singing competition of the German music colleges and in 1958 the Prize of North Rhine- Westphalia for young artists.

Career

In 1953, Helmut Kretschmar began a successful career as a concert and oratorio singer. He participated in the Berlin Festival, also at the Bach Festival in Lüneburg and Heidelberg from 1960 to 1962, where he proved a great Bach interpreter. He has also been involved in the Göttingen Handel Festival and made ​​many concert tours throughout the world. Helmut Kretschmar stepped et al on in the concert halls of Berlin, Dusseldorf, Cologne, Paris, Madrid, London, Bombay, India, Korea, the Philippines and Sri Lanka. In 1954 he was part of NWDR in Hamburg at the premiere of Arnold Schoenberg's opera Moses und Aron with under the baton of Hans Rosbaud.

Helmut Kretschmar focused his artistic work mainly on the interpretation of works by JS Bach, however, was also successful in performances of oratorios by Handel, Mendelssohn, Haydn, and in works of modern music. Together with his wife, the pianist Renate Kretschmar- Fischer, who was also a professor at the Musikhochschule Detmold, he gave concerts as a song - singer, in which he, inter alia, the songs of Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, Hugo Wolf and Claude Debussy dedicated.

Recordings

There are numerous recordings for the record labels Columbia, Decca, DGG, L' Oiseau Lyre, Vox, Philips, Disco Philes Français Edition and Schwann, hereunder some opera recordings (for example, Beethoven's Fidelio, Schoenberg's Moses und Aron ), although Helmut Kretschmar has made no operatic career. In the first place, however, recordings of Bach's St. Matthew Passion, Christmas Oratorio and the Mass in B Minor, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, Haydn's Seasons and the show -flat major by Schubert were.

As a teacher,

In 1960 he became professor of singing at the Music Academy in Detmold, from 1961 he worked there as a professor until his retirement in 1990. Helmut Kretschmar to students include, among others Cornelia Wulkopf, Uwe Heilmann, Tomoka Nakamura, Maria Venuti, Klesie Kelly - Moog, Yvi Jaenicke, Guido Baehr, Axel and Birgit Remmert Mendrok.

Private

Helmut Kretschmar is married to the pianist Renate Kretschmar- Fischer, with whom he had two children - daughter Corinna Kretschmar is an international interior designer - has, and lives in Hiddesen near Detmold.