Christian Ridil

Born in Breslau in 1943, Christian Ridil received a thorough education and musical training (piano, violin, singing, harmony) at the Regensburger Domspatzen music high school. After graduating from high school, he studied music education and composition with Günter Bialas at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich and musicology at the University of Augsburg.

After fourteen years as a high school teacher in Neusäß/Augsburg, Christian Ridil became academic director at the Goethe University in Frankfurt/Main. He taught at the Institute of Musicology until his retirement in 2011 and directed the university’s own choruses
and orchestras. In the 1992/93 academic year Ridil taught as a visiting professor in the US at Trenton State College, New Jersey. In 1994 Goethe University appointed him university music director, and in 2010 he received an honorary doctorate from the same institution.

As director of both the Augsburger Vokalensemble he co-founded in 1976 and the chamber choir of the Goethe University Frankfurt (1987), Christian Ridil became known to a wider public through concert tours and media productions (TV, radio, records, CDs).

Ridil has received numerous awards for his extensive body of works. This includes several commissioned works such as Psalm 23 in 2008 on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the bishopric of Cardinal Lehmann in Mainz. Ridil’s orchestral and chamber music works have been performed in Germany and abroad, including by members of Ensemble Modern, the Frankfurter Opern- und Museumsorchester, Sinfonietta Dresden and the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Ridil’s choral works are part of the repertoire of many vocal ensembles. His motets, choral cantatas and secular vocal music are performed by the cathedral choirs in Mainz and Regensburg, the choir of Dresden’s Hochschule für Kirchenmusik, and numerous other vocal ensembles specializing in sacred and secular music.

Christian Ridil’s choral works form part of the repertoire of many vocal ensembles. His motets, choral cantatas, and secular vocal music are performed by the cathedral choirs in Mainz and Regensburg, the choir of the Dresden College for Church Music, and numerous other sacred and secular vocal ensembles. In 2013 a CD was produced featuring a selection of Christian Ridil’s works for organ solo, organ and oboe, and organ and trumpet. In 2018, a CD was released presenting sacred and secular choral works under the direction of Stephan Lennig. In 2020, GENUIN classics released a CD featuring male choruses and solo songs with the Camerata Musica Limburg under Jan Schumacher, as well as a CD of chamber music (Vol 1) in 2021, and another CD of chamber music (Vol 2) in 2023, recorded by members of the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, among others. A CD featuring orchestral music was released in 2024, with Robbert van Steijn conducting the Leipziger Symphonieorchester. In 2024/25, two further CDs were produced with GENUIN classics: the present album featuring solo songs and works for children’s and women’s choir, and a third chamber music CD, performed by the Ensemble Modern in Frankfurt am Main.

Christian Ridil - composer, conductor, choir director and choir founder: a portrait of the composer at SWR2 (in German).


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On the occasion of the 80th birthday of the composer Christian Ridil, there was an intergenerational class reunion at his former college, the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München.

Picture: private archive

The artist's homepage:

https://www.christianridil.de