Moritz Eggert (*1965, Heidelberg) is considered one of the most versatile and adventurous voices in contemporary music. Born in Heidelberg and raised in Heidelberg, Mannheim and Frankfurt am Main, he began playing keyboards in various rock and jazz ensembles while still in school, followed by academic studies, first as a pianist, then as a composer. These studies later took him to London and Munich (where he now lives with his wife, the writer Andrea Heuser, and his two children). From the beginning he has worked in all musical genres – his catalog of works, now numbering more than 275, includes not only 16 full-length operas, but also several ballets and works for dance and musical theater, orchestral music, chamber and ensemble music, vocal and choral music (with a strong focus on song), church music, experimental and electronic music, instrumental concerts, music for children and young people, film and radio music, as well as radio plays and open-air performances. An experienced and much sought-after pianist of both classical and modern music, he has performed numerous world premieres of his own and other works both at home and abroad. In recent years he has also been increasingly working as a conductor, actor and singer with numerous appearances in operas and theater productions.
Together with Sandeep Bhagwati he founded the “ADEvantgarde-Festival” for young composers in Munich while still a student, which still exists today. He participates actively and critically in German cultural life and was on the board of the German Composers Association for 3 years. In addition to his many articles for national and international print and online media, he regularly writes for the “Bad Blog of Musick”, which he founded and is the most widely read contemporary music blog in Germany, for which he writes much-discussed satirical and provocative articles on a wide range of topics about contemporary culture and cultural politics. He is considered an advocate of a necessary change in new music and is regarded as a critic of ivory tower attitudes and worldliness. This also makes him a passionate supporter of the younger generation of composers, to whom he also devotes himself as a professor of composition at the Munich University of Music and Drama.
Moritz Eggert’s music is performed all over the world, and his cycle for piano solo “Hämmerklavier”, among others, is particularly well known and is one of the most performed piano works of the present day. His music has also often been the focus of media attention: he wrote a “soccer oratorio” as well as the music for the opening ceremony of the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany, which was watched by over a billion people. The German tabloid press labeled him a “porno composer” for his opera “The Snail,” and his opera “Freax” generated a staging scandal. An eccentric collage of all Mozart operas aroused tempers at the Salzburg Festival, as did the “Foot Ballet,” which was perceived by conservative audiences as a “desecration” of the Vienna Opera Ball (and was the first contemporary piece of music ever performed there). With his works, he always writes against the public image of the “well-behaved classical composer”, as well as through genre-bending concerts, such as with the electropop duo “2raumwohnung” or Harald Schmidt. Moritz Eggert is currently working on a major project for the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn for the Beethoven Year (together with Axel Brüggemann) as well as a new opera for Bonn. Furthermore, orchestral concerts for percussion (Konstantin Napolov) and violin/viola (Elisabeth Kufferath) are in planning. (as of January 2020)
Foto: Katharina Dubno