Born in Düsseldorf on 17 September 1967; Ben Süverkrüp is a composer and pianist. The son of the singer-songwriter and painter Dieter Süverkrüp, he studied composition with Wolfgang Hufschmidt at the Folkwang-Hochschule in Essen, where he also trained in music theory, piano and flute. At the time of the recording he lived in Düsseldorf as a freelance music teacher, pianist and composer. An artistic focus of his is the engagement with history: his compositions respond to historical musical models, often to specific pieces of music, or deal directly with political history. He appears on two albums in the Cybele catalogue. On Incontri – Encounters (2000) Christiane Lorenz and Thomas Leander give the first performance of his variations “Ohne Blumen” (1999) for flute and grand piano, which refer to Franz Schubert’s variations on “Ihr Blümlein alle”: besides normally played notes the flute produces the shortest, implosion-like sounds without breath, 24 strings of the piano are prepared, and each variation is based on a different formal idea, such as waltz, scherzo, sonatina or fughetta, up to the almost conventional relationship of melody and accompaniment in the final aria. On Anna Ikramova: Der schlafende Reiter DVD (2000), the recording of the Essen production of this opera, he takes part in the ensemble.
Ben Süverkrüp
Composer
