“As a conductor, Gruber is in his element when it comes to Weill's quintessential mix of Bach and ballroom, and his performance of Little Threepenny Music was louchely sensual and classically poised. The BBC Philharmonic's response to Gruber is tangibly enthusiastic: the partnership is off to a fine start.” The Guardian
Composer, conductor, chansonnier and double bass player HK Gruber is one of the most well-known and well-loved figures in contemporary music, and yet he remains something of an enigma. Composing in his own highly individual style, he has been labelled ‘new-Romantic’, ‘neo-tonal’, ‘neo-expressionistic’ and ‘neo-Viennese’, but his music remains refreshingly non-doctrinaire - a deceptively simple and darkly ironic idiom which often includes a heavy dose of black humour. Berg, Stravinsky, cabaret and pop music are all influences, but whatever stylistic ingredients he uses in his works, he remains inimitably himself: one of the major talents of post-war music. As such, Gruber was recently awarded Austria’s most prestigious cultural prize, the 2002 Greater Austria State Prize (Groβer Österreichischer Staatspreis).
Born in Vienna in 1943, Gruber sang with the Vienna Boys Choir as a child and then studied at the Vienna Hochschule für Musik - double bass with Ludwig Streicher, theory with Hanns Jelinek, and composition with Erwin Ratz and Gottfried von Einem. In 1961 he began playing double bass with the ensemble die reihe and from 1969 to 1998 he played in the Radio Symphony Orchestra-Vienna. Gruber first began performing as a singer/actor with the ‘MOB art and tone ART’ ensemble, a group he co-founded in 1968 with fellow Viennese composers Kurt Schwertsik and Otto Zykan. Since then he has appeared extensively in this role, most notably in his own work Frankenstein!!, and also in Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire and Maxwell Davies’ Eight Songs for a Mad King, as well as in the works of Kurt Weill and Hanns Eisler.
Gruber’s most popular and beloved composition, the neo-gothic ‘pan-demonium’ Frankenstein!!, was premiered in 1978 by Simon Rattle and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra with Gruber as Chansonnier. Since then it has travelled across several continents in several languages and in different guises: in concert, in staged performances, on television, and on film. In 1997 the work was released on CD by EMI Classics with Gruber and Camerata Salzburg under Welser-Möst and more recently on Chandos with the BBC Philharmonic. Among Gruber’s other compositions are two violin concertos written for Ernst Kovacic, a cello concerto written for Yo-Yo Ma (premiered at Tanglewood in 1989), percussion concerto Rough Music, trumpet concerto Aerial written for Håkan Hardenberger, and orchestral works Dancing in the Dark, commissioned and premiered by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle in 2003, and Hidden Agenda, premiered at the Lucerne Festival where Gruber was Composer-in Residence in 2006. His dramatic works include Gloria von Jaxtberg (a pigtale) and the opera Der Herr Nordwind, premiered at Zurich Opera in 2005, conducted by Gruber. Gruber’s most recent work is his second trumpet concerto Busking (written for trumpet, accordion, banjo and string orchestra), premiered by Håkan Hardenberger during 2008, while his next major premiere comes at the end of the 2009/10 season with Austrian percussionist Martin Grubinger performing Websites: Symphony for solo percussion and large orchestra with the Radio Symphonieorchester Wien under Peter Eötvös.
Gruber is also in demand internationally as a conductor, and takes on the position of Composer/Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic from the beginning of this season; as part of this role he will conduct new commissions, develop recordings for Chandos and conduct the orchestra on tour as well as within their main series at the Bridgewater Hall. During 09/10, Gruber will conduct the BBC Philharmonic in the UK premiere of his second trumpet concerto Busking, with Håkan Hardenberger and conducts the premiere of a new work by Friedrich Cerha in a shared concert with Principal Guest Conductor Vassily Sinaisky, as well as music by MacMillan, Schwertsik, Stravinsky and Markevitch. Elsewhere, he conducts the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in the US premiere of Busking with Håkan Hardenberger, as well as the Brucknerorchester Linz, Northern Sinfonia and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra on tour in Vienna, Dusseldorf and Cologne. As chansonnier he works with the New York Philharmonic and Alan Gilbert, performing songs by Weill and Eisler alongside his trumpet concerto Aerial, performed again by Håkan Hardenberger, conducted by Gilbert. Elsewhere, Gruber has conducted orchestras such as the Vienna Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Ensemble Modern, Gothenburg Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Baltimore Symphony, and has appeared at festivals including the BBC Proms, Lucerne, Gstaad and Musica Nova. In addition, he has performed as Chansonnier in his work Frankenstein!! with many orchestras, such as the Philadelphia Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic, Malaysian Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony and Saint Louis Symphony (at the Carnegie Hall with David Robertson.)
Gruber recently directed, conducted and performed in a concert performance of Weill’s Die Dreigroschenoper, with Klangforum Wien and a cast including Ian Bostridge, Dorothea Roeschmann and Angelika Kirschlager, at the Hamburg Musikhalle, London’s Barbican Centre, the Theatre des Champs-Elysées in Paris and the Vienna Konzerthaus. Other recent conducting successes include with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchester, WDR Sinfonie Orchester for New Year concerts in Essen and Cologne, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the new music ensemble of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia di Roma, Tokyo Metropolitan Orchestra, and the Basel and Swedish Chamber Orchestras.
Passionate about the music of Kurt Weill and Hanns Eisler, Gruber is a frequent interpreter of their works and in 2009 he recorded Weill’s Die Dreigroschenoper with the BBC Philharmonic, having previously made several recordings of the music of Weill and Eisler for BMG and Largo. On Gruber’s latest BIS release, he conducts selected works of Brett Dean with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra. He has also recorded a number of his own works - for Chandos with the BBC Philharmonic including Dancing in the Dark; for BIS with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, including Zeitfluren and in 2009 Busking, Nebelsteinmusik and his Violin Concerto; and also for BIS Zeitstimmung with the Tonkünstler Orchestra. For Deutsche Grammophon's 20-21 series, Håkan Hardenberger recently recorded Aerial with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra.
The works of HK Gruber are published by Boosey & Hawkes.
HK Gruber is represented by Intermusica.
2009/10 season / 864 words. Not to be altered without permission. Please destroy all previous biographical material.
Sample conducting programmes
Mahler Chamber Orchestra, June 2009
WEILL Seven Deadly Sins
GRUBER Frankenstein!!
Vienna Philharmonic, October 2008
SCHWITTERS Ursonate
ANTHEIL A Jazz Symphony
CERHA Five pieces from Weiner Kaleidoskop
STRAVINSKY Violin Concerto in D Major
GRUBER Frankenstein!!
BERNSTEIN Prelude, Fugue & Riffs
Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchester, February 2009
ANTHEIL A Jazz Symphony
COPLAND Symphony for Organ and Orchestra
BERNSTEIN On the Waterfront
HK GRUBER Percussion Concerto
Bayerischer Rundfunk Symphony, April 2008
JOHN ADAMS Slonimsky’s Earbox
GRUBER Aerial
WEILL Seven Deadly Sins
BBC Philharmonic, February 2010
WEILL Kleine Dreigroschenmusik
GRUBER Busking
STRAVINSKY Symphony in 3 movements
Vienna Philharmonic, August 2006
BERNSTEIN Prelude, Fugue and Riffs
ANTHEIL A Jazz Symphony
GRUBER Dancing in the Dark
WEILL Seven Deadly Sins
Cleveland Orchestra, October 2003
EISLER Suite No.4
GRUBER Dancing in the Dark
WEILL Kleine Dreigroschenmusik
VON EINEM Concerto for Orchestra
Rotterdam Philharmonic, January 2003
STRAVINSKY Feu d'artifice, Op.4
HINDEMITH Ragtime (well tempered)
ANTHEIL A Jazz Symphony
STRAVINSKY Tango (orchestra version 1940)
BERNSTEIN Prelude, Fugue & Riffs
GRUBER Charivari
STRAVINSKY Scherzo à la Russe
WEILL Songs - various
Bruckner Orchestra Linz, October 2009
GRUBER Hidden Agenda
GRUBER Busking
IVES Three Places in New England
ADAMS My Father Knew Charles Ives
New World Symphony Orchestra, November 2006
MACMILLAN Tryst
DEAN Pastoral Symphony
GRUBER Frankenstein!! (full orchestra version)
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Worklist highlights
Frankenstein!! (1978) 28’
Baritone chansonnier & orchestra or ensemble
Frankenstein!! is HK Gruber’s signature piece – his most famous, “naughtily notorious” work. It is a concert piece, but also music theatre, an event, and is quintessential Gruber: larger-than-life, exuberant, fun, witty and ironic with an irrepressible strain of Viennese black humour. Frankenstein!! can be performed in two ways, with Gruber taking on the dual role of conductor and chansonnier, or the work can be directed by another conductor, with Gruber taking on the role of soloist.
Aerial (1998-99) 25
Trumpet concerto (Håkan Hardenberger)
Busking (2007) 30’
Trumpet concerto (Håkan Hardenberger), with strings, accordion and banjo
Zeitfluren (2001) 23’
Chamber orchestra or ensemble
Charivari (1981) 12’
Symphony orchestra
Dancing in the Dark (2002) 22’
Symphony orchestra
Der Herr Nordwind (2003-5) 120’
Opera in two parts with libretto by HC Artmann
Nebelsteinmusik (1988) 16’
Violin and strings
Hidden Agenda (2006) 14’
Symphony orchestra
Rough Music (1982-83) 26’
Percussion concerto
3 MOB Pieces (1977, arr. 1999) 11’
Version for trumpet & chamber orchestra
Cello Concerto (1989) 22’
Cello and ensemble or small orchestra
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New York Philharmonic & Hakan Hardenberger / Aerial
“In the second of the work’s two movements, Mr. Gruber’s writing for both trumpet and orchestra is more assertive and stylistically far flung. His inspiration here was a fantasy of Earth, seen from space, abandoned but for a sign bearing the movement’s title, “Gone Dancing.” And what he offers is a global party piece drawing on the trumpet’s affinity for ornately decorative lines with a jazz accent. But he also makes extensive, if subtle, use of the orchestra’s percussion section, and in its final pages, the movement morphs into an exotic, modal Balkan dance.”
New York Times, June 2010
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
“As a conductor, Gruber is in his element when it comes to Weill's quintessential mix of Bach and ballroom, and his performance of Little Threepenny Music was louchely sensual and classically poised. The Stravinsky, meanwhile, sounded dark and heavyweight, but was thrilling in its rhythmic precision and exactitude. The BBC Philharmonic's response to Gruber is tangibly enthusiastic: the partnership is off to a fine start.”
The Guardian, March 2010
Mahler Chamber Orchestra / Frankenstein!! at the North Norway Festival
“HK Gruber’s interpretation of these rhymes was hysterically funny, and as a framework for his buffoonery the orchestra delivered a performance which was truly world-class.”
Harstad Tidende, 22 June 2009
“The performance couldn’t have called for anything less than a standing ovation. How often can you see a conductor sing while simultaneously conducting an orchestra and playing toy instruments? It was amazing fun to watch. Who says that classical music has to be serious?”
NRK News, 20 June 2009
“HK Gruber, the 67-year-old world-famous chansonnier, composer and conductor amused, shocked and impressed us with his performance of his own work Frankenstein! He drew us into a world of heroes, demons and villains, and got the orchestra to play instruments which would be better suited to a children’s nursery than to a concert hall. Nevertheless, music was successfully produced by the small horn instruments and rubber tubes. This was a musical experience full of invention, fantasy and rhythm. It was contemporary music in the truest sense of the word.
It was a truly electrifying musical experience which created enormous excitement.”
www.nordlys.no, 21 June 2009
“HK Gruber once again led the orchestra through the complex structures with the utmost calm, creating space for the excellent soloists of the Gewandhaus Orchestra.”
Leipzig Almanach, 5 March 2009
“At the Usher Hall we heard Kurt Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny – massive undertaking and a considerable achievement by all concerned… the performance was exhilarating, especially in its choral and orchestral constituents. Conducted by H K Gruber (nowadays ‘the legendary’), players and singers kept alert and responsive; cohesion and momentum were unfalteringly sustained.”
Opera Now, November/December 2008
“Gruber secures an unsparing response from the BBC Philharmonic, superbly recorded”
Gramophone, May 2007
“The combination of Gruber’s alternately amiable and ominous delivery with his evocative music largely holds the attention. ... A thought provoking composer.”
Gramophone, January 2007
"The Viennese HK Gruber conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Singers in an astonishing late Prom that framed bold, blackly satirical choral items by Weill and Eisler with his own orchestral work. His vocalisation (while beating time and playing toy instruments) of the early, madcap poem sequence Frankenstein!! was riotous. The new, 10-minute Hidden Agenda took his preferred modes of polyphonic density and relentless, Bergian, jazz-inflected tutti to a scarcely credible extreme. This was music as tantalising as it was substantial. "
The Sunday Times, August 2006
"Gruber’s self-conducted concert with the BBC Singers and BBC Symphony Orchestra was riveting. Bertolt Brecht’s faux-naif political poetry was tailor-made for musical treatment by his friends Kurt Weill and Hanns Eisler: the series of songs which Gruber selected packed an extraordinarily gamey punch... Finally, Gruber gave a stunning performance in his popular Frankenstein!!. It wasn’t just the paper bags burst and flung into the audience. It was the lovable madness of the whole charade."
The Independent, August 2006
“Gruber’s infectious conducting style, which saw him dancing around the podium at times, gave the BBCPO players an almost Viennese sense of luxurious abandon.”
The Guardian, August 2004
“Heinz Karl Gruber, an inventively eclectic composer generally known as H. K. Gruber, has long been drawn to works of Kurt Weill. He has made fine recordings of them both as a singer (for the short-lived Largo label) and as a conductor (one notable outing being a "Dreigroschenoper" with the Ensemble Modern for RCA).
Mr. Gruber has a good sense of the century's second quarter, and he conducts the Berlin Palast Orchester with a graceful swing that brings the spirit of the music and of the era to life.”
New York Times, March 2002
“The inimitable Viennese composer, conductor and ‘chansonnier’ HK Gruber was in his element, launching the evening with the doomed jollity of ‘Berlin im Licht,’ a celebration of a great city on the verge of economic and social disaster. His distinctive vocal tones, if a little over-amplified, seemed just right….The presciently sardonic attack against multinationals, ‘Mussels from Margate,’ was delivered maniacally by the irrepressible Mr Gruber. His penetrating tones were put to more sombre use in the Sprechgesang of Vom Tod im Wald, one of Weill’s memorable settings of Brecht.”
The Independent , March 2000
“he made the music and the Ensemble Modern quiver with instrumental detail….this was a carefully crafted texture of sound, pointedly articulated so that such evocative sonorities as the plink-plonk of the banjo and the whine of the saxophone peeked through and asserted their piquancy.”
Daily Telegraph , October 1999
"HK Gruber, who conducted this concert, is in some respects a spiritual heir of Eisler, both as a composer and as a performer of Eisler's works. In the jazzy overture and songs for Johann Nestroy's play Höllenangst and in Die Mutter, Gruber was a marvelously vital chansonnier, lucid and vividly expressive."
The Daily Telegraph, May 1998
Nebelsteinmusik
"Then came a deeply sensitive account of HK Gruber's second violin concerto, Nebelsteinmusik, a work in which light music and constructivism miraculously coincide."
The Sunday Times, February 2007
"H.K. Gruber's 1988 Nebelsteinmusik [is] a muscular, fast-striding composition, ecstatically sonorous in places, that pays homage to Gruber's mentor, the 20th-century German composer Gottfried von Einem, through a quirky postmodern prism of jazz influences."
The Times, February 2007
Hidden Agenda
"The UK premiere of the strikingly scored Hidden Agenda suggests an inspirational turn towards Berg."
The Guardian, August 2006
"The new, 10-minute Hidden Agenda took his preferred modes of polyphonic density and relentless, Bergian, jazz-inflected tutti to a scarcely credible extreme. This was music as tantalising as it was substantial. "
The Sunday Times, August 2006
3 MOB Pieces
"…it's always good to hear that dazzling trumpeter Håken Hardenberger cascading through the James-Last-goes-neoclassical romps of HK Gruber's Three MOB Pieces ."
The Times, August 2004
"Say what you like about Gruber, but it would take a heart of stone to actively dislike this engaging pastiche of bossa nova, Beatles and baroque, especially in Hardenberger's hands."
The Guardian, August 2004
Manhattan Broadcasts
"These are two scores of infinite fascination, superbly presented. Definitely one of my discs of the year."
The Times, October 2003
"Gruber's music is a serious response to the Viennese traditions he was born into, but his ever-present grin outweighs any solemnity."
Evening Standard, August 2003
Dancing in the Dark
"The Helsinki Philharmonic began with a scorching account of HK Gruber's recent Dancing in the Dark, that comically ferocious elegy for gemütlich Viennese music."
The Financial Times, March 2004
"Dancing in the Dark … is monstrously touching with its incessant 1920s and 1930s overtones."
Financial Times, August 2003
"First came a multilayered dirge, then a slow-motion foxtrot, plus a bizarre, even menacing, homage to Fred Astaire's tap-dancing feet. I couldn't detect Arthur Schwartz's title song in the stew, but Mahler, yes, and Berg, and other glories of the Viennese tradition whisked to the edge of madness. …The BBC Phil, at any rate, gave this trembling and troubled new score a rousing send-off."
The Times, August 2003
"The British premiere of the Viennese HK Gruber's profound, neo-Mahlerian, neo-Ivesian diptych, Dancing in the Dark …"
The Sunday Times, August 2003
Zeitfluren
"HK Gruber paid us a welcome return visit last week. At the season's final Green Umbrella he unfurled his Zeitfluren, a new piece co-commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. … Its major strength is its marvellous scoring and the clarity as inner voices seem suspended in space. Wit and wisdom form an impeccable counterpoint."
LA Weekly, May 2003
"HK Gruber conducted the world premiere of his Zeitfluren, a totally absorbing work contrasting an overtly Romantic nocturne with one of his typically raucous orgies of dance music as finale."
BBC Music Magazine, February 2002
The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny
"HK Gruber, conducting the BBC Philharmonic, is second to none in this music, playing up to its amalgamation of jazz and neo-classicism for all it is worth."
The Guardian, September 2000
"…He made the music and the Ensemble Modern quiver with instrumental detail. …This was a carefully crafted texture of sound, pointedly articulated so that such evocative sonorities as the plink-plonk of the banjo and the whine of the saxophone peeked through and asserted their piquancy."
The Daily Telegraph, October 1999
Frankenstein!!
"What raises Frankenstein!! to "classical" status is its combination of brilliant word-setting with uncannily apt, thoroughly "composed" music, fraught with suggestion and macabre humour - like Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire with more jokes."
Financial Times, August 2006
"Frankenstein!! is an event, a piece of theatre as much as of music. It needs to be experienced live. Frankenstein!! was first performed nearly thirty years ago, but is still fresh and vivid. "
musicweb-international.com, August 2006
"Gruber's delivery was no less a tour de force. Employing a "speech-song" vocal style and armed with an array of toy instruments, Gruber's merriment was contagious."
Winnipeg Saturday Free Press, February 2000
"Frankenstein!! is a virtually uncategorizable work, a zanily bedazzling collge of different influences and styles, ranging all the way from bar-room cabaret to parodies of operatic declamation."
Classic CD, January 1998
"both grisly and bizarre, and altogether an extraordinary conception. …The score is often hilarious, but Gruber's own delivery, a tour de force of vocal gymnastics, reinforces the underlying seriousness."
The Times, December 1997
"hugely entertaining and devilishly clever. … How to describe it to anyone who has never heard it? The music touches all those areas of culture to which the texts (in which Frankenstein and Dracula rub shoulders with James Bond and Goldfinger) refer. So pop music and hints of folk-song, Kurt Weill and Hanns Eisler are all thrown into the mix to fuse with Stravinskian neo-classicism and the long tradition of Viennese cabaret. The humour is black but quizzically genial, Gruber's own performance is gleefully exuberant, but there's something to the musical style of Frankenstein!! which taps deep roots and protects it from being no more than an entertaining jeu d'esprit."
Gramophone, November 1997
Aerial
"The highlight of the BBC Proms Brass Day was Håkan Hardenberger's scintillating account of a modern classic among trumpet concertos, HK Gruber's Aerial."
The Telegraph, July 2007
"Irresistible fun, and as usual, Gruber's idiosyncratic harmonies lend it a strange poignancy."
The Financial Times, August 1999
"Gruber weaves a musical tapestry bristling with wit and invention, punctuated with telling silences and animated by syncopations that suggest a world out of kilter… A dazzling display of compositional technique."
The Times, August 1999