12th International Johannes Brahms Choir Festival and Competition - Program Book

Prof. Dr. Friedrich Krell was a pioneer of choral art in the former GDR and later in the
reunified Germany. In 1988 he founded the Wernigeroder Singakademie and in 1991 he
was appointed director of the Landesgymnasium für Musik Wernigerode, which grew
out of the special classes for music education he established in 1963. In 1994 he helped
to establish the Saxony-Anhalt State Youth Choir. He was active as a valued advisor,
lecturer at choir director courses and as an international adjudicator. Prof. Dr. Friedrich
Krell was the founder and for 45 years the artistic director of the internationally renowned
Rundfunk-Jugendchor Wernigerode, with which he successfully participated in one
of the newly founded INTERKULTUR choir competitions in Riva del Garda in the 1990s.
In the following years, the choir, then under the direction of Peter Habermann, continued
to enthuse at further competitions and at the 1 st Choir Olympics, later the World Choir
Games, in Linz.
It was on Friedrich Krell's initiative that the former Lord Mayor of Wernigerode, Ludwig
Hofmann, and INTERKULTUR President Günter Titsch met in the 1990s to establish a
regular choir competition of international standing in the colourful town at the foot of
the Harz Mountains: The International Johannes Brahms Choir Festival & Competition
in Wernigerode. In 2003, Prof. Dr. Friedrich Krell was honoured with the Cross of Merit
on Ribbon of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for his services to
the choral movement. His memory will be preserved especially at the International Johannes
Brahms Choir Festival & Competition in Wernigerode.
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