Bernd Richard Deutsch

Bernd Richard Deutsch (born 1977) today numbers among the most internationally successful composers of his generation. His highly virtuosic, playful music is distinguished by “a seemingly almost inexhaustible abundance of vivid musical characters, situations, and gestures” (Die Presse). Among his most important works are Intensity for orchestra, Urworte for chorus and orchestra, Okeanos – Concerto for Organ and Orchestra, Phaenomena – Music for Sheng and Orchestra, Murales for ensemble and orchestra, a Cello Concerto, large-scale ensemble pieces (Mad Dog, Dr. Futurity), Lingua for 16 voices, chamber music of various instrumentation as well as piano and other solo pieces.

Bernd Richard Deutsch has received commissions from renowned festivals and institutions such as the Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, The Cleveland Orchestra, the Bamberger Symphoniker, Wien Modern, ECLAT Stuttgart, Klangspuren Schwaz, the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, the ORF, musikprotokoll im steirischen herbst, the Staatstheater Stuttgart, and the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival. His works have been performed in Europe, the USA, and Asia by orchestras including the Cleveland Orchestra, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart, the ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Vienna, the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Tonkünstler-Orchester Lower Austria, and by ensembles such as Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Modern, the Arditti Quartet, the Vokalensemble Stuttgart, and ensemble die reihe. Conductors such as Franz Welser-Möst, Alan Gilbert, Manfred Honeck, Jakub Hruša, François-Xavier Roth, Vasily Petrenko, Gianandrea Noseda, Juraj Valcuha, Han-Na Chang, Johannes Kalitzke, HK Gruber, Andrés Orozco-Estrada, and Peter Rundel perform his music. The Philharmonia Orchestra London devoted a portrait concert to him in 2017.

From 2018 to 2021, Bernd Richard Deutsch has been working with the Cleveland Orchestra as their Composer Fellow. The US premiere of Okeanos, presented in 2019 by the orchestra under the baton of Franz Welser-Möst, was released on CD in 2020. Other highlights of the past seasons were performances of Okeanos in Stavanger, Stockholm and Berlin, the world premiere of his Concerto for Saxophone Quartet and Orchestra at the Leipzig Gewandhaus with the Raschèr Quartet and the premieres of his orchestra work Phantasma in Bamberg, Amsterdam and Liverpool, as well as the world premiere of Urworte for chorus and orchestra at the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie. The 2025/26 season will see the European premiere of Intensity with the Berlin Philharmonic.

Bernd Richard Deutsch has received numerous awards for his works, such as the Australian Paul Lowin Prize for Orchestral Composition in 2015. This was preceded, among other things, by the Paul Hindemith Prize in 2014, the Erste Bank Composition Prize in 2013, second prize of the Toru Takemitsu Composition Award in 2011, the composition prize of the Bregenz Festival in 2011, a state scholarship for composition in 2010 (and again in 2017), and the Advancement Prize for Music of the City of Vienna in 2009. In 2016 he was a fellow of the Civitella Ranieri Foundation.

Bernd Richard Deutsch studied composition at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, where he now lives as a freelance composer. Since 2014 his works have been published by Boosey & Hawkes.

Updated Nov 2025 (translation: Howard Weiner)
This biography can be reproduced free of charge in concert programmes with the following credit: Reprinted by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes