News

Uwe Gronostay 1939 - 2008

02.12.2008

Uwe Gronostay conducted the Nederlands Kamerkoor for the first time in 1987, and for the last time in 2006. From 1988 until July 1997 he was chief conductor and artistic director of the Nederlands Kamerkoor, and presented in total 55 different concert programmes with the choir. In the course of these many projects he succeeded in raising the choir to a particularly high and internationally respected level, not only in The Netherlands but also on the numerous foreign stages on which he appeared with ‘his’ Nederlands Kamerkoor.
There exist 13 CDs of the Nederlands Kamerkoor conducted by Uwe Gronostay.
In 1997 Her Majesty Queen Beatrix appointed Uwe Gronostay Knight in the Order of Orange-Nassau for his contribution to Dutch musical life.

Uwe Gronostay was born in Hildesheim in 1939, and studied church music in Hannover, Bremen and Sienna. From 1963 he worked as cantor and organist in Bremen. Between 1972 and 1986 he conducted the RIAS–Kammerchor in Berlin. From 1982 until 2002 Uwe was conductor and artistic director of the Berlin Philharmonic Choir and Principal Guest Conductor of the Danish National Radio Choir, as well as being a regular guest conductor of the Netherlands Radio Choir.
Alongside his conducting work Uwe Gronostay had since 1976 been a professor of choral conducting at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin.

We remember Uwe Gronostay as a very special person and exceptional musician, and as the unique chief conductor whose musical legacy has been of the greatest significance to the Nederlands Kamerkoor both at home and abroad. In recent months he had been following with great concern the reports of an intended reduction in the choir’s subsidy, and had thrown himself heart and soul into defending the interests of ‘his’ Nederlands Kamerkoor.
 
Leo Samama, General Manager Nederlands Kamerkoor.