Fritz Neuböck | Composers

The Austrian composer Fritz Neuböck, who was born in 1965, studied music at the Bruckner Conservatory in Linz, majoring in piano, trumpet and conducting. He was awarded his diploma in 1997 and has been director of the Ebensee Regional Music School since 1998. At an early stage Neuböck began to conduct brass bands and symphonic wind orchestras. As early as 1995 he was conductor of the Steyr Municipal Band, and since 2002 he has run a number of other orchestras including the Salzkammergut Wind Philharmonic.

Neuböck describes his general musical and compositional credo in the following words: "I try to compose in a great variety of styles, from chamber music to pop. (...) In a composition the idea is always the aspect which is foremost for me."

This idea determines Neuböck’s choice of compositional tools. Just as he requires a good instrumentalist to be able to interpret a classical work as meaningfully as a jazz title, he also poses himself, as a composer, the challenge of stylistic heterogeneity and flexibility. He sees a considerable danger to the progressiveness of wind music in a widespread "blinkered" attitude which is unable to liberate itself from "old-fashioned structures". He himself formulates his intention in the following way: "Keeping up traditions does not mean guarding the ashes but rather carrying on the flame."