Aribert Reimann was known equally as a composer and as a vocal accompanist; in the latter sphere, he was especially closely associated with the baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. The composer of operas and vocal music based on major literary works, not only German ones, he was also an important educator. Reimann was born in Berlin on March 4, 1936. He grew up amid the desperate circumstances that prevailed toward the end of World War II, and a bleak atmosphere in much of his music has been attributed to his experiences at that time. After the war, at age ten, he performed in a production of Kurt Weill's opera Der Jasager at school. He attended the Musikhochschule Berlin, studying composition with Boris Blacher and Ernst Pepping and piano with Otto Rausch. Reimann financed his education by working as a rehearsal pianist at the Städische Opera (now the Deutsche Oper Berlin). Working with such singers as Fischer-Dieskau and mezzo-soprano Brigitte Fassbaender oriented him toward vocal music as both a performer and composer. He wrote a ballet, Stoffreste, with a libretto by novelist Günter Grass in 1959. Reimann turned to opera in the 1960s with Ein Traumspiel (1965), based on August Strindberg's play A Dream Play. His fourth opera, Lear (1978), was based on Shakespeare's play King Lear and starred Fischer-Dieskau in the lead role at its premiere. Reimann often accompanied Fischer-Dieskau in live performances and on recordings. Among his early recordings was one on the Orfeo label, from 1984, on which he and Fischer-Dieskau performed lieder by Carl Friedrich Zelter. In 1990, Reimann and others recorded an album of his own works for the Wergo label. For much of the first part of his career, Reimann was an adherent of serialism, but later, he treated serialist procedures in a more relaxed manner. More than 50 of his works had been recorded as of the mid-2020s, ranging from solo pieces for cello, oboe, and clarinet to orchestral music, opera, and other works in large forms. Reimann joined the faculty at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin in the early '70s and taught there for many years, also serving as a professor of contemporary song at the Musikhochschule Hamburg from 1974 to 1983. He was frequently honored with national German awards in later life, including the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize in 2011. Reimann died in Berlin on March 13, 2024. ~ James Manheim, Rovi

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Aribert Reimann

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