Friedemann Riehle

Who is Friedemann Riehle?

Friedemann Riehle is a German conductor.

Riehle was born in Stuttgart. After violin lessons at a young age he studied classical guitar in Stuttgart as well as orchestra conducting at the Meistersinger Academy in Nuremberg and in Vienna at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst. Already as a student he conducted his first opera night with Carl Maria von Weber's opera "Oberon". In 1995, Riehle was one of the people who founded the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. With this orchestra Riehle cooperates frequently for recordings, for the Prague New Year’s Concert as well as for concerts abroad. In order to make symphonic music easily accessible for a wider audience and especially for young people, Riehle started in 1997 to cut down long symphonic movements by Anton Bruckner and Gustav Mahler to pieces of a duration of about 7 minutes. This idea inspired many conductors years later.

Also, in order to incorporate epoch-making music of the 20th century into the classical repertoire, Riehle frequently conducts concerts with classical rock music by Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Queen. Riehle has worked with Ian Gillan of Deep Purple on eleven symphony in rock performances.