Foundation Council
The Hindemith Foundation in Blonay is administered by a Foundation Council supplemented by additional members, and elects a President from amongst its members as executor of its resolutions. The Foundation Council determines all work and activities of the Foundation, administers its assets and decides upon the utilisation of revenues within the scope of the purpose of the Foundation.
The current Foundation Council is composed of the following members:
Prof. Dr. Andreas Eckhardt, President
Member of the Foundation Council since 1985, President of the Foundation Council since 1999
Andreas Eckhardt was born in 1943 in Marienberg/Erzgebirge, Germany. He studied music pedagogy, musicology and history in Mainz and Vienna, and was a secondary school teacher in Mainz.
1971-1979 activity at Schott Music Publishers in Mainz and, at the same time, Federal Executive Director of the Union of German School Music Teachers. 1980-1998 Secretary General of the German Music Council in Bonn. 1998-2009 Director of the Beethoven House in Bonn. 1988-2005, moreover, instructor in the course of study Culture and Media Management at the Music Academy in Hamburg. Member of advisory boards of music festivals, the International Beethoven Competition Bonn, the German Music Instrument Fund, the German Music Information Centre as well as the Jürgen Ponto Foundation.
Andreas Eckhardt is a recipient of the Federal Cross of Merit, 1st Class, of the Federal Republic of Germany.
François Margot, Vice President
Member of the Foundation Council since 1995, Vice President since 1999
Prof. Christian Höppner
Prof. Christian Höppner
Member of the Foundation Council since January, 2018.
Prof. Hans-Dieter Resch
Member of the Foundation Council since 1983
1975-1995 Rector of the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Frankfurt am Main, 2003 Honorary Senator, Fellow of the Royal Northern College of Music Manchester (RCNM), conductor, composer
Dipl.-Ing. Andreas Schober
Member of the Foundation Council since 1996
Andreas Schober is the son of Ebba Schober, née Kleinwächter, a niece of Gertrud Hindemith, and of Karl-Herbert Schober, who was a founding member of the Foundation Council. Andreas Schober lives in Hannover and is active there in an executive function in the financial services sector.
Prof. Tabea Zimmermann
Member of the Foundation Council since 2013
The violist Tabea Zimmermann is one of the most renowned and beloved musicians of our time. Her charismatic personality, her profound musical understanding and her natural playing are appreciated in equal measure by her listeners and musical partners. As a soloist, she regularly works with the world's most important orchestras. Since 2002 the Arcanto Quartet, of which she is a co-founder, has been forming a focal point of her work in the field of chamber music. Following professorships at the Music Academy in Saarbrücken and at the Frankfurt Academy of Music, Tabea Zimmermann has been Professor at the «Hanns Eisler» Academy of Music in Berlin since October 2002.
Tabea Zimmermann has been frequently honoured for her artistic activities, both in Germany and abroad; her awards include the Frankfurt Music Prize, the Hessian Cultural Prize, the Rheingau Music Prize, the International Prize of the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena and the Paul Hindemith Prize of the City of Hanau. Since Autumn 2011, Tabea Zimmermann has been serving as Ambassador of the Federal Children's Hospice Foundation.
The indefatigable enthusiasm with which she imparts her understanding of the works and her love of music to her audience has always applied to the works of Paul Hindemith as well. During the Hindemith commemoration year 2013, she will be playing works of this composer on various programmes. She is currently preparing a complete recording of all the sonatas and concertos for the CD label myrios classics.
Dr. Andres Briner, Honorary Member †
1923-2014
Member of the Foundation Council 1968-2003, President of the Foundation Council 1985-1999.
Honorary member of the Foundation Council since 2003
On the Death of Dr. Andres Briner
The Hindemith Foundation mourns the loss of its longstanding president, Dr. Andres Briner. The Foundation, which administrates and organises the legacy of Paul Hindemith in accordance with the testamentary disposition of the composer's widow, was founded in 1968. In the same year, Andres Briner was appointed to the Foundation Council. With his monographs, essays and reviews, he made wide-ranging, more or less polyphonic contributions to this complex, provocative and, accordingly, controversial composer-personality. His thought on music and, in particular, his reflections on Hindemith were notable for their simultaneity of proximity and distance to the observed subject, as is indispensable for a scholar and, especially, for a music critic as well.
Andres Briner had a personal, direct relationship to Paul Hindemith. He studied musicology with him in Zurich in 1951 and 1952, and those of us who were younger thoroughly envied him this "blessing of an early birth".
With all his later commitment to his teacher Hindemith, Andres Briner was open to the variety of musical worlds and individualities in the 20th century. In his numerous scholarly contributions, as in the critiques of the NZZ, one senses his strong will to unconditionally come to terms with what is foreign and remote, albeit critically. Thus the anthology of important texts by him, published on the occasion of his 70th birthday, rightly bears the title "Musical Coexistence".
This book title, chosen by him, says a great deal about his attitude towards a musical development during the past hundred years that is strongly differentiated within itself and has also become confusingly complex. The formulation "musical coexistence" reflects the endeavour to integrate what is different and to create an overall view of contradictory and diverse tendencies. The musical-aesthetical judgement of Andres Briner was considerate, level-headed and carefully weighed, not out of trepidation but because his knowledge was so great.
This ability to unite, to bring together, gave his work on the Foundation staff a firm foundation on which differing opinions and temperaments could be placed.
Having reached the age of 80, Andres Briner informed the Foundation Council of his decision to leave the Council from that time onward. He did this in his own reserved way, also so as to not burden us, his colleagues and friends. At that time, he wrote: "Eleonore and I consider it a blessing that we are able to remain active until my 80th birthday. But for millennia, people have grasped the threshold that must then be crossed. This is the end of my affiliation with the Foundation Council, but it is not the end of our friendship".
Andres Briner has now crossed the final threshold in human life, and the Hindemith Foundation mourns the loss of a committed, loveable friend. But if it is written in the Talmud that man dies twice - that he first suffers death and then becomes forgotten - it is absolutely certain that we all shall not forget Andres Briner.
Andreas Eckhardt, President of the Fondation Hindemith