PRESENTATION OF THE 2016 EUROPEAN COMPOSER AWARD

Dieter Rexroth is considered one of the most creative minds on the German music scene today. From 1996 to 2006 he was artistic director and dramaturge of the Radio Orchestras and Choruses GmbH and the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester in Berlin, a capacity in which he invited the conductor Kent Nagano to Berlin, who has since become a world-renowned artist and whose concert programmes he still designs today. In addition, Dieter Rexroth has been the artistic director of Young Euro Classic since its inception in 2000, making him one of the fathers of the extremely successful festival which takes place for the sixteenth time in 2015. Further career highlights were the directorship of the Paul Hindemith Institute in Frankfurt as well as positions as dramaturge and chief programmer for Frankfurt’s Alte Oper. He was also artistic director of the “Frankfurter Feste” (1986 to 1994) and has been responsible for the “Kassel Music Days” in the same position since 2006. Furthermore, he has taken on the unsalaried responsibility for the “Felix Mendelssohn Music Academy Competition” held by the German Music Academies and the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation.