Early arose
my career aspiration:
Singer
As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to sing. As a boy soprano, I sometimes wished my parents would put me in a choirboy boarding school. After my voice broke, it became more concrete: I wanted to become an opera and oratorio singer. But it came differently. After a few semesters of voice lessons at the Musikhochschule Frankfurt, I buried this dream and set out to become an opera director. I also gave up this plan after two years of opera directing at the Staatstheater Kassel, and after a year in New York in an off-off-Broadway theater company, I worked, starting back in Germany in 1973, as an actor and director in theater, radio and television – and in this year I got to know Taiji and Qigong. In 1979 my Taiji training led me to Master King Hung Chu, London. In 1980 I founded the first Taiji school in Germany and in 2002 I was recognized as a Master. I had said goodbye to acting and directing in the same year that I started Taiji with Master Chu – but not to singing …
Singer and song accompanist:
“A singer can create atmosphere! And that’s what I try to teach young people: You don’t have to inspire your audience with your brilliance, but you have to move them. Move them inwardly, penetrate their hearts! Even if a note should not be so successful, that does not matter! It is not absolute perfection that counts… (but) to create a mood – in the sense of these wonderful poems, which do exist and which are so perfectly set to music.” (Hermann Prey, baritone)
“The pianist must not be afraid to express himself – he must not be too reticent. One must not think in the categories of `singer -and accompanist`: here two musicians meet. Both are equally important. No singer can give a recital without a pianist…really great recitals happen when singer and pianist make chamber music together!” (Irwin Gage, pianist and song accompanist)
The first joint CD with pianist Stella Goldberg from 2003 presents songs by Jewish composers Pavel Haas, Hans Krása and Viktor Ullmann, who were interned in Theresienstadt and murdered in Auschwitz in 1944.
“Much of the suite is stubbornly unlyrical and discordant, making it unruly to listen to and no doubt contributing to the disproportionately small number of sound recordings.”
