Bernd Johannes Wolf
musician / composer
If music be the food of love, play on.
(William Shakespeare)
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upcoming concerts:
"Des Bösen gelbe Schwefellichter" (The yellow sulfur lights of evil) - A chamber opera as a musical stumbling block
to commemorate the pogrom night on November 9th, 1938, using the example of the town of Hattingen.
by Bernd Johannes Wolf
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Sunday, 12th November 2023, 7 pm, church in Winz-Baak,Schützstraße 2, 45529 Hattingen
I am delighted that my chamber opera project "Des Bösen gelbe Schwefellichter" - "The yellow sulfur lights of evil" commemorating the pogrom night on November 9th, 1938, will be staged, with wonderful vocal and instrumental soloists! Details under:
https://artemedis.ruhr/events/save-the-date-kleine-kammer-oper/
Awarded with a Bronze Medal at the 2022 Global Music Awards: CD "Modern Muses", released in October 2021, with works for soprano (Josefien Stoppelenburg) and cello (Jean Hatmaker) by composers from different countries around the globe: https://www.navonarecords.com/catalog/nv6377/
Among them is a composition of mine, "This Is Just To Say"
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXZESFcx3fI)
Scroll down for more information.
The 17th of October 2021 marked the 65th anniversary of the chess “game of the century” between Donald Byrne and Bobby Fischer, spectacularly won by then 13-year-old Bobby Fischer. On this day, in Hattingen-Blankenstein, there was the premiere of my concept piece «Une partie d’échecs» for string quartet, which translates the game into music. My composition was part of a programme with music (Philidor, Rossini, Mendelssohn-Bartholdy) related to the royal game.
Live recording of the premiere on October 17, 2021, in Hattingen-Blankenstein (animation: Jonas Wolf)
In the strange year of 2020, among other things two "Corona" works sprang from my quill, both songs, albeit both of a completely different nature.
The first one was created during the first phase of the first lockdown, soon after the poet Friedrich Hölderlin's birthday - as with Beethoven this year it was his 250th.
It so happened that the Lied duo Inga Balzer (soprano) and Tilman Wolf (piano) launched an online concert series from their home, and thankfully included my setting of Hölderlin's "Come! into the open, friend!" in their programme for the fourth edition of their series, even choosing its title as the programmatic heading for the whole concert.
So here is their performance of my composition as it could be heard and seen in the online concert:
The second is a setting of the poem "This Is Just To Say" by the American poet William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) for soprano and cello.
Here again I am delighted that Chicago-based soprano Josefien Stoppelenburg and cellist Jean Hatmaker have taken a liking to my piece, enough for it to be included in their wonderful project, namely a CD with compositions solely for soprano and cello, which has now been released under the title of Modern Muses.
Et voilà: