MENTOR FRIEDRICH HAIDER

 

I am hopelessly in love with this music!
It sought me out, and has not let me go ever since. 

(Friedrich Haider)

 

Since 2003 the conductor Friedrich Haider has been regarded as the re-discoverer and tireless champion of the works of Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari.

In 2002 in a second hand book shop in London, Haider chanced upon a score of Wolf-Ferrari’s comic opera “Il Segreto di Susanna” („Susanna’s secret“) and he felt as though the music had struck him like a bolt of lightning. 

He immediately programmed the work in one of his concerts (Judith Howarth, Renato Bruson and the Munich Radio Orchestra, in Munich 2003)  heralding to the general public his commitment to the music of Wolf-Ferrari, which is undiminished to this day.

Subsequently, conducting the North Spanish „Oviedo Filarmonia“, Haider brought out a CD recording of the work and between 2008 and 2011 with the same orchestra, made the first ever recordings of the composer’s entire orchestral works, followed by recordings of the Violin Concerto with Benjamin Schmid (issued in 2012 by FARAO), the Geistliches Mysterium “Talitha Kumi”, the complete a capella choral works as well as the entire overtures and intermezzi from the operas.

In 2015 the stage of the Slovak National Theatre in Bratislava was the scene of a spectacular success: under the direction of Friedrich Haider, the premiere of Wolf-Ferrari’s “I Gioielli della Madonna” (“The Jewels of the Madonna”) garnered standing ovations.

 

Roger Willemsen, essayist, and television producer on Friedrich Haider’s rediscovery of the composer Wolf-Ferrari:

 

“Dear Mr Haider, I feel blessed. The music is so astonishing, rich and multi-faceted, and equally profound and lyrical, it has stolen my heart and I thank you for this discovery.”

Yours, Roger Willemsen