Both a composer and a piano accompanist, Aribert Reimann pursued both activities throughout his career, which was rewarded with the Ernst von Siemens Prize in 2011. Born in Berlin, Germany on March 4, 1936, to a father who was a choirmaster and a mother who was a voice teacher, he was introduced to music at an early age. He studied composition and piano at Berlin's Musikhochschule, where his teachers included Boris Blacher, Ernst Pepping and Otto Rausch. He began his career as a répétiteur at the Berlin Opera before continuing his studies in musicology in Vienna. After composing his first ballet, Stoffreste (with a libretto by Günter Grass), in 1959, Aribert Reimann turned his attention to the opera Ein Traumspiel, which premiered in Kiel in 1965. Although he wrote numerous vocal works, chamber music and orchestral pieces, it was his operas that were most often performed, starting with Lear - based on Shakespeare's King Lear – which was recorded in Munich in 1978 with baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and soprano Júlia Várady. Other productions included Melusine (1971), Troades (1986), and Medea, which premiered at the Vienna Opera in 2010. A voice teacher in Hamburg from 1974 to 1983, Aribert Reimann was also known as a pianist-accompanist in the field of Lieder, particularly for the many recordings he made with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Christine Schäfer, and Brigitte Fassbaender. He taught in Berlin from 1983 to 1998 and continued to compose until 2017. Honored with numerous awards, including the Commander's Cross of the German Order of Merit (1985), the Berliner Kunstpreis (2002), and the Arnold Schönberg Prize (2006), Aribert Reimann received the prestigious Ernst von Siemens Music Prize in 2011. He died in Berlin on March 13, 2024, at the age of 88.
