Heinz Winbeck

“Is composition a necessity? Is my composing, my filling in, deepening, making denser, compressing, stretching, over-coming the sense of time with the help of notes, those tender and still so obstinate symbols of the unspeakable, necessary or superfluous? I don’t know. What kind of strange, amazing text is this, which has to be continued from generation to generation, which against all obstacles again and again searches for an outlet? Is breathing necessary?”
Heinz Winbeck

“Winbeck’s scores can be hardly attributed to any particular ‘school’, they do not adhere to any dogma. No particular style. So: Winbeck is an outsider. One would like to leave it at that if there weren’t already so many considering themselves outsiders: … One can quickly prove to most of the self-proclaimed outsiders that their music is in fact not so outsider-like. Winbeck however is one. Winbeck’s publicly admitting his affinity to Bruckner and Mahler does not in itself mean that he is oriented to the past – ‘but rather to the inside’. And this exposed inner world, of which Winbeck himself speaks rather anxiously, leaves one at a loss for words but fascinated when reading his scores and listening to his music. Winbeck is a decidedly constructive composer, who searches and finds the greatest possible density even when writing expansive and lush works. He consolidates the ragged, even the apocalyptic with great care, he pays the utmost attention in order to create an illuminating instrumentation.”
Wolfram Schwinger

„We at the Filharmonie Brno were stunned and saddened by the sudden and unexpected death of one of Europe‘s greatest living composers, Heinz Winbeck.

Only last Friday (March 22, 2019) I was able to speak with Heinz by telephone and report to him of the wonderful success his „Lebenstürme“ was enjoying with our subscription audience, in three performances which I conducted in Brno with the Filharmonie Brno together with pianist Maki Namekawa and baritone Martin Achrainer. Tragically these will have been the last performances during the lifetime of this profound and intense musician and composer, and thus our coming performance of „Lebenstürme“ on April 27, 2019 in Vienna at the Musikverein for the series „Musik der Meister“ will be even more significant and meaningful.

No one who has had the opportunity to perform or hear a major work by Winbeck has been left unmoved or unchanged by this experience, and I will do everything I can to see that an even wider circle can join in this experience.“
Dennis Russell Davies, Chief Conductor and Artistic Director – Filharmonie Brno