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: Chöre für Männerstimmen
SWR Vokalensemble Stuttgart, Frieder Bernius
Classical - Released by Carus on 2 Jun 2023
24-Bit 48.0 kHz - Stereo -
Brahms: Ein deutsches Requiem, Op. 45
Klassische Philharmonie Stuttgart, Kammerchor Stuttgart, Frieder Bernius
Classical - Released by Carus on 1 Oct 1998
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Kalliwoda : Symphonies Nos. 5 & 6
Hofkapelle Stuttgart, Frieder Bernius
Classical - Released by Orfeo on 26 Apr 2006
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mendelssohn: Verleih uns Frieden. Kirchenwerke VI
Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Stuttgarter Kammerorchester, Kammerchor Stuttgart, Frieder Bernius
Classical - Released by Carus on 1 Jul 1999
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Luigi Cherubini: Requiem in C Minor
Kammerchor Stuttgart, Hofkapelle Stuttgart, Frieder Bernius
Classical - Released by Carus on 1 Aug 2010
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mendelssohn: Lobgesang
Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Frieder Bernius
Classical - Released by Carus on 1 Jan 2008
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Bach's Family: Choral Motets
Frieder Bernius, Kammerchor Stuttgart, Sonntraud Engels-Benz, Unknown Artist
Choral Music (Choirs) - Released by haenssler CLASSIC on 14 Jun 2019
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Beethoven: Mass in C Major, Op. 86; Cherubini: Sciant gentes
Hofkapelle Stuttgart, Kammerchor Stuttgart, Frieder Bernius
Classical - Released by Carus on 1 Feb 2013
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: Die Israeliten in der Wüste
Barockorchester Stuttgart, Kammerchor Stuttgart, Frieder Bernius
Classical - Released by Carus on 1 Oct 2014
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Kalliwoda: Orchestral Works
Daniel Sepec, Pierre-André Taillard, Hofkapelle Stuttgart, Frieder Bernius
Classical - Released by Carus on 1 Oct 2016
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Bach : Oratorios for Easter & Ascension Day
Sacred Oratorios - Released by Carus on 1 Jan 2015
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Knecht: Orchestral Works & Arias
Hofkapelle Stuttgart, Sarah Wegener, Frieder Bernius
Classical - Released by Carus on 1 Dec 2011
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mendelssohn: Paulus, Op. 36
Maria Cristina Kiehr, Werner Güra, Michael Volle, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Kammerchor Stuttgart, Frieder Bernius
Classical - Released by Carus on 1 May 2007
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Josef Gabriel Rheinberger: Cantus Missae. Musica sacra II
Kammerchor Stuttgart, Ensemble Stuttgart, Frieder Bernius
Classical - Released by Carus on 1 Feb 1989
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mendelssohn: Wie der Hirsch schreit. Kirchenwerke IV
Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Kammerchor Stuttgart, Frieder Bernius
Classical - Released by Carus on 1 Feb 1997
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mendelssohn: Geistliches Chorwerk. Motetten, Psalmen, Choralkantaten, Lobgesang
Kammerchor Stuttgart, Frieder Bernius
Classical - Released by Carus on 1 Mar 2012
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Johannes Brahms: Warum ist das Licht gegeben. Musica sacra
Detlef Bratschke, Kammerchor Stuttgart, Bläser der Deutschen Kammerphilharmonie, Frieder Bernius
Classical - Released by Carus on 1 Jul 1996
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mendelssohn: Hebe deine Augen auf. Kirchenwerke VII
Kammerchor Stuttgart, Frieder Bernius
Classical - Released by Carus on 1 Apr 2006
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mendelssohn: Geistliche Chorwerke
Kammerchor Stuttgart, Frieder Bernius
Classical - Released by Carus on 8 Jul 2022
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Messiaen: Cinq rechants, O sacrum convivium & A-cappella-Werke von Debussy, Ravel und Mahler (Arr. Clytus Gottwald)
Kammerchor Stuttgart, Frieder Bernius
Classical - Released by Carus on 1 Oct 2021
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Jan Dismas 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