Michael Denhoff

* 1955 in Ahaus; studied cello with Siegfried Palm and Erling Blöndal Bengtsson and composition with Hans Werner Henze at the Musikhochschule Köln; chamber music studies with the Amadeus-Quartett; fellow of the Villa Massimo in Rome in 1986; received the Bernd-Alois-Zimmermann-Preis of the city of Cologne; a catalogue of works with more than 100 opus numbers; founder and artistic director of the concert series “WORTKLANGRAUM” in Bonn. He made his first attempts at composition at the age of ten and received stimulus from Günter Bialas in doing so; from 1973 he studied in Cologne, composition also with Jürg Baur. From 1976 to 1980 he held a fellowship of the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, and in 1984/85 a teaching post for music theory at the Universität Mainz. He lives in Bonn as a freelance composer and cellist, directed the Akademisches Orchester there from 1985 to 1992 and belonged to the Ludwig-Quartett Bonn from 1992 to 2008; since 1996 he has played in a duo with Birgitta Wollenweber. In 1997/99 he was visiting professor at the National Conservatory in Hanoi, and from 2008 to 2021 lecturer in chamber music at the Robert Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf. He received first prizes at the composition competitions in Hitzacker and Bergisch-Gladbach, the Annette-von-Droste-Hülshoff-Preis and in 2013 the Gerda-und-Günter-Bialas-Preis. Eight albums have connected him with Cybele since 1995, as composer and as cellist alike. They trace an arc from Campanula (1995) through the Portrait Michael Denhoff (1997) with chamber music, piano and string quartet works and the Mallarmé Cycle op. 75, twelve quartets for twelve musicians (2000), to the cello in my life (2003). To these are added The Untempered Piano – New Music for Toy Piano (2003), his Credo (2004) and the Bach-Variationen op. 114 for piano (2017). The campanula, an extended string instrument, appears in three of these productions and in 2024 stands at the centre of the 3D binaural album ..für: Works for Campanula (+Harp).