Hans Zender

Hans Zender studied composition with Wolfgang Fortner, as well as piano and conducting, at the conservatories in Frankfurt and Freiburg. A Villa Massimo scholarship took him to Rome for two extended residencies in 1963/64 and 1968/69. He served as chief conductor of the Bonn Opera from 1964 to 1968 and was General Music Director of the city of Kiel from 1969 to 1972.

From 1971 to 1984, Zender shaped the profile of the Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra and played a pivotal role in the festival Music of the 20th Century. He was General Music Director of the Hamburg State Opera from 1984 to 1987, then chief conductor of the Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor at the Opéra National in Brussels until 1990.

Between 1999 and 2011, he was a regular guest conductor and part of the artistic leadership of the SWR Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden and Freiburg, while also collaborating with numerous top international orchestras. His artistic output is documented in many significant television and CD recordings.

From 1988 to 2000, Zender held a professorship at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts, where his composition class produced several prominent composers, including Hanspeter Kyburz, Isabel Mundry and José M. Sánchez-Verdú. He was a member of the Free Academy of the Arts in Hamburg, the Academy of Arts in Berlin, and the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts in Munich.

In 2011, he founded the Hans and Gertrud Zender Foundation. His work was recognised with numerous awards, including the Saarland Arts Prize (1980), the Frankfurt Music Prize and the City of Frankfurt's Goethe Prize (both in 1997), and the Hessian Culture Prize (2002).

He was a Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin in the 2005/06 season and Composer-in-Residence with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (DSO), returning in that role in 2013 at the Klangspuren Schwaz festival. In 2011, he received the European Church Music Prize for his body of compositional work.

Hans Zender passed away in 2019 after a long illness, aged 82.