Solisten des Hamburger Knabenchores
For more than fifty years, boys have discovered their love of music at Hamburg's Boys Choir. They grow up and mature with masterworks from music history that are simply part of their everyday lives, and they take many unique experiences and skills into their adult lives.
Established in 1960 as the Boys Choir of Northern Germany Radio, currently about one hundred boys and young men aged from 5 to 25 sing in Hamburg's Boys Choir. At various choral levels, they are comprehensively prepared for the choir’s demanding repertoire and active concert schedule.
The choir’s repertoire comprises both an extensive range of a capella works as well as large oratorios. Bach’s passions and Christmas Oratorio are performed annually. Other works of their core repertoire include Haydn's Creation (performed in 2019 in Tokyo), Mozart's "Mass in C-minor" and "Requiem", Schubert's Mass in E flat-major, Mendelsohns' "Elias" and "Paulus", Faure's "Requiem", Britten's "War Requiem", as well Bernstein's "Chichester Psalms" and "Mass".
The choir can be regularly heard performing motets in the services of Hamburg’s main protestant Church St. Nikolai, with which it is associated. These numerous performances ensure a regular fine-tuning of the choir, something that also characterizes boarding school choirs. The Hamburg Boys Choir is a regular guest of professional ensembles as well as concert halls and opera houses. Soloists from the choir have taken on the parts of the three boys in Mozart's "Magic Flute" at opera houses from Kiel and Lübeck to Lisbon. In October 2021, they sang Alban Berg's "Wozzeck" at Elbphilharmonie, conducted by Zubin Metha. The choir sang in 2022, for example with Kent Nagano and Thomas Hengelbrock.
Concert tours both in Germany and abroad are also part of the Hamburg Boys Choir's established traditions. The choir has toured in Asia several times, as well as in Argentina and several European countries. In 2022, the Choir performed in São Paulo and Vienna.
LUIZ DE GODOY
Artistic Director
Luiz de Godoy discovered his love of music at the age of five. He completed his training in piano solo, choral and orchestral conducting over several stages in Brazil, the USA, France, Germany and Austria. In 2019, he received the appreciation award from his Viennese alma mater, the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. He has also worked as a choral conductor for renowned ensembles such as the Vienna Singakademie and the Chorakademie of the Vienna State Opera and has worked with many greats such as Gustavo Dudamel, Valery Gergiev, Ton Koopman, Sir Simon Rattle, Franz Welser-Möst and Simone Young, as well as the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras, among others. He made his debut as an orchestral conductor in Brazil in 2015 and subsequently conducted in several countries in Europe, Asia and South America, including the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra in productions of the Hamburg State Opera.
In 2016, Luiz de Godoy was appointed Kapellmeister of the Vienna Boys' Choir, with whom he toured over 20 countries. At the same time, he was awarded the Erwin Ortner Prize for the Promotion of Choral Music. The Hamburg State Opera brought him to the Hanseatic city for the 2019/20 season and entrusted him with the direction of its children's and youth choir. Since January 2021, Luiz de Godoy has also been the artistic director of the Hamburg Boys' Choir.
