Bernhard Klee was a German conductor born on April 19, 1936 in Schleiz (Thuringia) and died on October 10, 2025 in Kreuzlingen, Switzerland. Trained at the Musikhochschule in Hamburg, he studied piano, conducting and composition. Early on, he established himself as a musician of great intellectual rigor and a sensibility deeply rooted in the German classical and romantic tradition. In the 1960s and 1970s, Klee began a distinguished career in several German opera houses, before being appointed principal conductor of the Hanover Radio Philharmonic (NDR Radiophilharmonie), a post he held for the first time from 1976 to 1979, before returning between 1991 and 1995. In between, he conducted the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra from 1977 to 1987, and the Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz from 1992 to 1997. He also collaborates with numerous German radio ensembles, including the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln, the HR-Sinfonieorchester (Frankfurt) and the SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg. He also conducts regularly at the Hamburg Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin and Semperoper Dresden. His repertoire covers a wide spectrum, from Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms to 20th-century music including Hindemith, Britten, Henze and Schoenberg. He is particularly esteemed for his clarity of baton, his sense of orchestral detail and his analytical approach to scores. In parallel with his international conducting career (Europe, Japan, USA), Bernhard Klee has also devoted himself to pedagogy, teaching conducting at the Hochschule für Musik in Hanover. Married to Swiss soprano Edith Mathis (1938-2025), he conducted her in several operas and accompanied her on the piano in lieder.
