Hannover Boys Choir
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The Hannover Boys Choir (Knabenchor Hannover) was founded in 1950 by Professor Heinz Hennig and conducted until the end of 2001. Since 2002, the conductor has been Professor Jörg Breiding.
The Hannover Boys Choir has traditionally specialized in the works of seventeenth Century composers, its main focus at first having been on the works of Heinrich Schütz. The choir's five Schütz recordings under Hennig's baton produced between 1982 and 1999 not only set new standards for performances of this repertoire, but four of them won prizes as well (amongst them the Deutscher Schallplattenpreis). The choir turned its attention to Andreas Hammerschmidt in 1998 when it recorded some of his sacred choral music and suites.
The Hannover Boys Choir was among the first choirs to take an interest in historical performance practices and in doing so achieved a quality of musicianship that has since won it acclaim not just in Germany but internationally as well. World-class musicians such as Gustav Leonhardt, Ton Koopman and Christoph Eschenbach have all worked with the choir, as have such famous orchestras as the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, the Academy of Ancient Music Berlin and countless German radio orchestras.
Besides giving concerts and performing at festivals both in Germany and abroad (including Israel, Japan, Russia, South and Central America, the US and South Africa), the Hannover Boys Choir also records regularly and can frequently be heard on the radio.
In 2006, the Hannover Boys Choir was awarded with the famous Echo Klassik in the category "choral works - recording of the year" for the CD „Verleih uns Frieden“. It contains the world's first recording of several works by Andreas Hammerschmidt that were believed lost for more than 350 years.
