Peter Neumann (Conductor)

Born: Germany

The German conductor, Peter Neumann, studied church music, conducting and the organ in Berlin and Paris.

Alongside choral music of the Romantic period, the focus of Peter Neumann's work with his two vocal ensembles, the Kölner Kammerchor and the Kartäuserkantorei, is on Early Music, in which he has made a particular name for himself through performances of numerous oratorios by George Frideric Handel - at festivals including the Turin Settembre Musica, the Flanders Festival and the Wratislawia Cantans - and the major choral works of J.S. Bach - for example with the B minor Mass (BWV 232) at the BBC Promenade concerts in 1993. Concert tours have taken him to almost all the countries of Europe and to Japan.

Peter Neumann has worked with such ensembles as Musica Antiqua Köln, the Capella Agostino Steffani and Concerto Köln, and has conducted the Collegium Cartusianum, which he formed in 1988, at numerous performances, for example, in May 1996 at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw with Mozart’s Il Re pastore. He has been guest conductor of the Dutch Chamber Choir, the Chorus of Südfunk broadcasting organization, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Tokyo Schola Cantorum and the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. In the series ‘250 Years of G.F. Handel’s Oratorios’, which he initiated, he is performing (following G.F. Handel’s 1749-1751 schedule) nine masterpieces by this great musical dramatist.

Outstanding among his CD recordings are the complete masses of Mozart, and Schumann’s Missa sacra, which won the Diapason d’Or. His live recording of G.F. Handel’s Saul was widely praised in the musical press.

Source: Liner notes to the 2-CD album ‘Bach: Passio secundum Johannem’ conducted by Peter Neumann (MDG, 2000)
Contributed by Aryeh Oron (May 2001)

Peter Neumann: Short Biography | Kölner Kammerchor | Collegium Cartusianum | Recordings of Vocal Works | BWV 245 - P. Neuman

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