Hannes Pohlit

Hannes Pohlit has been an artistic teacher of score-reading, score notation and concert coaching within the Department of Conducting and Opera Coaching since October 2017.

Born in Rhineland-Palatinate, he studied composition under Róbert Wittinger, Professor Hans Zender (Frankfurt am Main) and Professor Hans-Jürgen von Bose (Munich), as well as under Professor Reinhard Pfundt (Leipzig), Music Theory under Professor Gesine Schröder (Leipzig) and Conducting under Professor Christian Kluttig and Professor Gert Bahner (Leipzig), as well as under Professor Gunter Kahlert (concert diploma at the University of Music FRANZ LISZT Weimar).

After his first fixed engagement as a répétiteur with conducting responsibilities at Theater Erfurt, Hannes Pohlit founded a specialist ensemble for contemporary music in Leipzig (supported by the German Music Council, among others). He designed his own concert series with this ensemble at the Grassimuseum Leipzig. His external engagements as a conductor have taken him to the Thuringia Philharmonic Orchestra Gotha-Suhl, the Jena Philharmonic Orchestra, the Thuringia Symphony Orchestra Saalfeld-Rudolstadt and the Festival Zeitgenössischer Musik (Contemporary Music Festival) in Munich and to Central Germany, where he has conducted an array of premières and first performances.

Following his diplomas in composition and composition/aural training (all passed ‘with distinction’) at the University of Music and Theatre ‘Felix Medelssohn Bartholdy’ in Leipzig (2010), he took up lectureships in compositional structures (specialism: compositional structures/composition) and school-based music-making (Department of Music Pedagogy) at the university.

Since his activities as a conductor have now come to an end, composition is once again at the forefront of his artistic work. Hannes Pohlit’s works for orchestra, various chamber music instrumentations, solo organ and solo piano have been published by Friedrich Hofmeister Musikverlag (Leipzig) since 2013 and are played both within Germany and abroad. In 2014, he was the Composer in Residence at the ‘Cantiere Internazionale d'Arte’ in Montepulciano (Italy), which was founded by Hans Werner Henze, where his ‘Il Vento’ (‘The Wind’) symphony for large orchestra and his piano trio ‘Les Lumieres de la Nuit’ were premiered.

His incidental music for soloists, choir and orchestra for a restaging of Goethe’s Faust (commissioned by the Thuringia State Theatre Rudolstadt) was premiered in 2015 to pan-German acclaim, and was taken on by the Nordhausen Theatre in 2016 and the State Theatre Eisenach in 2018. He composed the quintet for bass clarinet and string quartet ‘Nel Fiume eterno’ for the Dortmund Philharmonic Orchestra’s chamber ensemble in 2016, and was commissioned to compose the violin concert ‘Humanité’ by the International Church Music Festival in Oslo, to mark the 500th anniversary of the reformation.

As a pianist, Hannes Pohlit primarily became specialised in the music of Franz Liszt. In recent years, he has performed piano recitals as part of the Leipzig-based ‘Blüthner Classics’ concert series, at the Leinsweiler Musiktagen (Leinsweil Music Days) and in the ‘Hubertusburg Classics’ series of castle concerts, among others.