Michael Gielen was born in Dresden in 1927 and died in Mondsee in 2019. After his family emigrated to Argentina he received his musical training in Buenos Aires and continued his composition studies with Josef Polnauer in Vienna; his early posts were at the Teatro Colón and the Vienna State Opera. As an opera and concert conductor he shaped the Oper Frankfurt as general music director from 1977 to 1987 and the SWR Symphony Orchestra as chief conductor from 1986 to 1999. Gielen was especially committed to the music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, conducted the première of Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s “Die Soldaten” and at the same time came forward with compositions of his own.
Michael Gielen
Conductor / Composer
