Franz Hummel (* 1939)
Discovered as far back as childhood and supported by Richard Strauss, Eugen Papst and Hans Knappertsbusch, Franz Hummel studied piano and composition in Salzburg and Munich and was initially known to be a piano virtuoso. He gave concerts throughout Europe and played with almost an entire classical-romantic repertoire and a lot of contemporary music on more than 60 records. Hummel no longer appeared in public as a pianist in the early 1970s. Starting then he devoted himself exclusively to composition. Hummel initially performed his own compositions under a pseudonym due to his run-in with opposition from the critics.
His operas, symphonies, ballets, concertos and chamber music works are performed by well-known performers and in prestigious concert halls and opera houses in Europe.
In 2000 his highly acclaimed first composed musical "Ludwig II - Longing for Paradise" had its world premiere in the specially built Neuschwanstein Musical Theater in Germany.
The operatic musical about the Bavarian fairytale king was performed for 1.5 million people up until 2003. In 2001 he broke out of his abstinence as a pianist and gave a concert with the Russian violinist Liana Isakadze at Carnegie Hall in New York. In continuation of the musical about Ludwig II, Hummel wrote a folk opera about Richard Wagner that was planned to premiere 2009 in Dresden.
In November 2008 Hummel's opera "The Judge and His Hangman" was premiered by the eponymous Duerrenmatt novel in Erfurt Opera House, Germany.
For the "2009 European Capital of Culture: Linz", he wrote the opening opera about Napoleon's Police Minister Joseph Fouché, who had to go into exile in Linz and is considered the inventor of the surveillance state.
In recent years Hummel composed a symphony for violin and orchestra entitled "FUKUSHIMA" to commemorate the victims of the Japanese nuclear disaster. Elena Denisova and the Moscow Symphony Orchestra premiered this work and released it under the label TYXart. This CD also contains Hummel's symphonic work "HATIKVA", also recorded by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra with clarinetist Giora Feidman as a soloist. Conductor of both recordings is Alexei Kornienko.
Hummel's latest unperformed works are an oratory based on words by Thea Dorn and the opera "Garden of Desires" about the painter Hieronymus Bosch based on a libretto by Wolfgang Haendeler.
