Frieder Bernius

Frieder Bernius (born 22 June 1947) is a German conductor, the founder and director of the chamber choir Kammerchor Stuttgart, founded in 1968. They became leaders for historically informed performances. He founded the Stuttgart festival of Baroque music, "Internationale Festtage Alter Musik", in 1987, and is a recipient of the Edison Award (1990), Diapason d'Or (1990) and the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (1993).

Frieder Bernius was born in Ludwigshafen-Oppau, the second child of the Protestant minister Helmut Bernius and his wife Inge, a church musician. After his Abitur at the Karl-Friedrich-Gymnasium in Mannheim he studied music and musicology at the Musikhochschule Stuttgart and at the University of Tübingen. In 1968, his first year at the Musikhochschule, he founded the Kammerchor Stuttgart (Stuttgart chamber choir). They first concentrated on a cappella music of the 19th and 20th century, but expanded their repertoire.

Since 1977, Bernius has collaborated with leading German orchestras and conducted the choirs of broadcasters, such as the SDR and WDR, the NDR Chor and the RIAS Kammerchor.

In 1985 the choir decisively turned to early music, and Bernius became known as a conductor of historically informed performance. He has continued in Bach's music the several-voice-to-a-part approach, as opposed to the one-voice-per-part approach advocated by Andrew Parrott and Joshua Rifkin. The Historical Dictionary of Choral Music says that it the choir is "recognized for high musical standards and stylistic flexibility, winning many international awards."Classical cites Bernius as leading "lively and intelligent performances." He has collaborated with the Musica Fiata of Cologne, the La Grande Écurie et la Chambre du Roy of Paris and the Tafelmusik of Toronto.

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