Biography
Werner Otto Trenkner (* 30 April 1902 in Calbe (Saale); † 9 September 1981 in Duisburg) was a German composer and conductor.
Werner Trenkner was the second son of the Merseburg cathedral organist Wilhelm Trenkner (1874-1949) and the singer Mathilde Trenkner, née Möhring. Despite this family environment, he only found deeper access to music at the age of 13. He received his first organ lessons from his father and soon prospered to the point where he could substitute for him at the great cathedral organ. In 1921, Trenkner began to study music theory and piano at the Leipzig Conservatory. From 1923 to 1928 he was a student at the State Academy of Music in Weimar. Among others, he studied there with the composer Richard Wetz, whose musical views and style left a lasting impression on Trenkner. Shortly before his death in 1935, Wetz is said to have ordered Trenkner to complete his unfinished oratorio Liebe, Leben, Ewigkeit. However, the latter did not get to do so due to legal disputes. After completing his studies in Weimar, Trenkner made a name for himself as both composer and conductor. From the 1929/30 season, he took over the musical direction of the Stralsund State Theatre.
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In 1931 or 1932 Werner Trenkner married the pianist and piano teacher Lotte Geil (1901-1994), a student of Bruno Hinze-Reinhold in Weimar. Their only daughter Evelinde Trenkner (1933-2021) was first taught by her parents as a child and later became an important concert pianist and respected piano teacher herself.
On 1 August 1932 Werner Trenkner joined the NSDAP (membership number 1,287,746), but was at least temporarily struck off for failure to deregister.[1] In 1933 he was awarded the prestigious Mendelssohn Prize. In the same year he worked as Kapellmeister in Oberhausen, from where he went to Berlin as a freelance composer in 1935 because of disagreements with the National Socialists, although he also worked in radio. In 1937, Trenkner became director of the Berlin Municipal Orchestra, but returned to Oberhausen the following year - now under the title of music director - where he founded a new Municipal Orchestra after the end of the Second World War. During the war, the composer suffered under National Socialist cultural policies and was little played. In 1951, Trenkner resigned from his official posts. In the next period, he withdrew from public life out of dissatisfaction with the musical avant-garde of his time and composed very little. It was not until the end of the 1960s that a new creative period followed. Werner Trenkner died at the age of 79 in Duisburg in September 1981.
As a composer, Trenkner moved on the border between late Romanticism and modernism. His style, although often peppered with harmonic daring, is basically rooted in major-minor tonality. The composer's most important historical models were Johann Sebastian Bach, Anton Bruckner and Max Reger. It is therefore not surprising that in many of his compositions a preference for contrapuntal forms, e.g. in the form of fugues, can be observed. Orchestral works occupy an important place in Trenkner's oeuvre, along with operas, chamber music, piano works, songs and choral compositions. The composer considered his main work to be the Requiem, which was first performed in 1946.
Biography text from Last.fm, available under CC BY-SA.