Heinz Winbeck

'All I can say is that I literally only put down on paper that which, were I not to do so, would cause me to explode.' - Heinz Winbeck

German composer, conductor and teacher Heinz Winbeck was born in Piflas on 11 February 1946. He studied with Magda Rusy and Fritz Rieger at the Richard-Strauss-Konservatorium München and with Jan Koetsier, Harald Genzmer and Günter Bialas as the Musikhochschule München.

He worked as a composer and conductor at the Stadttheater Ingolstadt (1974-8) and also for the Luisenburg-Festspiele. Later he became professor of composition at the Hochschule für Musik Würzburg.

He wrote five large-scale titled symphonies between 1983 and 2011, which have been compared to those of Gustav Mahler. They relate to and reflect on  large subjects such as history, loneliness, guilt, ecology and near-death experiences. His compositional style, like that of Wolfgang Rihm and Manfred Trojahn, was based on a new simplicity and subjectivity.

Winbeck died at a clinic in Regensburg on 26 March 2019, aged seventy-three.