Frieder Bernius
Frieder Bernius is a pillar of choral music culture in Stuttgart, Germany, founding several ensembles and conducting performances that are often historically oriented. He has also conducted orchestral music, and he has an exceptionally large recording catalog.
Bernius was born on June 22, 1947, in Ludwigshafen, in what was then West Germany. His father was a Protestant minister, and his mother was a church musician. Bernius attended a Gymnasium high school in Mannheim and then studied music performance and musicology at the Musikhochschule Stuttgart and the University of Tübingen. At the former, in 1968, he founded the Kammerchor Stuttgart ("Stuttgart Chamber Choir"). He also conducted various German radio choirs in the 1970s, but he continued to develop the sound of the Kammerchor Stuttgart; it had begun with a repertory of 19th and 20th century a cappella music, but by the mid-'80s, it had turned decisively toward early music. He remained the choir's director in the early 2020s. The group began to record for the Carus (Carus-Verlag) label, issuing Hör mein Bitten, an album of Mendelssohn's church music, in 1983. In 1985, he founded the Barockorchester Stuttgart ("Stuttgart Baroque Orchestra") and later the Klassische Philharmonie Stuttgart.
Beginning in the 1980s, the Kammerchor Stuttgart began to tour widely, in North and South America and in Asia as well as Europe, and a series of visits to Israel, still unusual for a German group at the time, began in 1984. Signed to the Sony Classical label in 1989, Bernius released albums there in the 1990s with the Kammerchor Stuttgart and other groups; he led a recording of Gluck's opera Orfeo ed Euridice with the Baroque group Tafelmusik in 1993. His recordings won several major prizes, including the Edison Prize in the Netherlands, for a recording with the Cologne Musica Fiata of Schütz's Symphoniae Sacrae III and France's Diapason d'Or for an album featuring Zelenka's Missa Dei Filii, again with Tafelmusik. Bernius also performed and recorded orchestral music, often with the Hofkapelle Stuttgart, of which he became music director in 2002. He has continued to record prolifically for Carus, Orfeo, Hänssler Classic, and other German labels, often issuing music by little-known Baroque and Classical-era composers such as Johann Gottlieb Naumann, Johann Wenzel Kalliwoda, and Justin Heinrich Knecht. By 2022, when he led the Kammerchor Stuttgart and Hofkapelle Stuttgart in a recording of Schubert's Mass in A flat major, D. 678, for Hänssler Classic, his recording catalog comprised some 120 items.
© James Manheim /TiVo
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Mendelssohn: Denn er hat seinen Engeln befohlen. Kirchenwerke V
Kammerchor Stuttgart, Frieder Bernius
Classical - Released by Carus on 1 Jan 1997
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Lux aeterna ... for 10-16 parts. Werke von Ligeti, Scarlatti, Boyd und Mahler
Kammerchor Stuttgart, Frieder Bernius
Classical - Released by Carus on 1 Feb 2001
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mendelssohn: Jauchzet dem Herrn, alle Welt. Geistliche Chormusik
Kammerchor Stuttgart, Frieder Bernius
Classical - Released by Carus on 17 Aug 2018
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mendelssohn: Elias, Op. 70
Klassische Philharmonie Stuttgart, Kammerchor Stuttgart, Frieder Bernius
Classical - Released by Carus on 1 Mar 2008
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Schütz: Easter Oratoria - Historia der Auferstehung
Classical - Released by Sony Classical on 27 Jan 2023
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mendelssohn: Magnificat. Kirchenwerke VIII
Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Kammerchor Stuttgart, Frieder Bernius
Classical - Released by Carus on 1 Oct 2008
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Zelenka: Missa Dei Filii/Litaniae Lauretanae
Classical - Released by Deutsche Harmonia Mundi on 1 Jan 1990
The Qobuz Essential Discography16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mendelssohn: Vom Himmel hoch. Kirchenwerke II
Krisztina Laki, Berthold Possemeyer, Württembergisches Kammerorchester Heilbronn, Frieder Bernius, Kammerchor Stuttgart
Classical - Released by Carus on 1 Oct 1985
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mendelssohn: Hör mein Bitten. Kirchenwerke I
Julia Hamari, Ensemble '76 Stuttgart, Kammerchor Stuttgart, Frieder Bernius
Classical - Released by Carus on 1 Mar 1983
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Max Reger: Drei Motetten, Op. 110
SWR Vokalensemble Stuttgart, Frieder Bernius
Classical - Released by Carus on 1 Mar 2016
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Schütz: Historia der Geburt und Auferstehung Jesu Christi
Classical - Released by Sony Classical on 1 Jan 1990
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mendelssohn: Die erste Walpurgisnacht, Op. 60, MWV D 3
Classical - Released by Carus on 23 Mar 2020
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Johann Sebastian Bach: Motetten
Kammerchor Stuttgart, Hartwig Groth, Christof Roos, Frieder Bernius
Classical - Released by Carus on 1 Oct 2012
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Burgmüller: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 2
Hofkapelle Stuttgart, Frieder Bernius
Classical - Released by Carus on 1 Jan 2010
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Bruckner: Mass in E Minor; Motets
Classical - Released by Masterworks on 24 Mar 1992
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mendelssohn: Lieder im Freien zu singen
Kammerchor Stuttgart, Frieder Bernius
Choral Music (Choirs) - Released by Carus on 28 Jan 2017
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Bach: Cantatas "Auf, schmetternde Töne", BWV 207a & "Schleicht, spielende Wellen", BWV 206
Classical - Released by Sony Classical on 19 Jun 1991
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Burgmüller: Piano Concerto, Op. 1; Entr'actes, Op. 17; Overture, Op. 5
Tobias Koch, Hofkapelle Stuttgart, Frieder Bernius
Classical - Released by Carus on 1 Aug 2013
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Bach: Motets BWV 225-229
Masses, Passions, Requiems - Released by Sony Classical on 23 Apr 2010
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Bach, J.S.: Oster-Oratorium, BWV 249; Bach, C. P. E.: Danket dem Herrn H. 824e; Heilig H. 778
Barockorchester Stuttgart, Frieder Bernius
Classical - Released by Carus on 1 Jul 2005
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mendelssohn: Oratorien
Kammerchor Stuttgart, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Klassische Philharmonie Stuttgart, Frieder Bernius
Classical - Released by Carus on 1 Mar 2012
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo