Claus Kühnl

Claus Kühnl (born in Arnstein, Lower Franconia, 17 November 1957) is a German composer, conductor, pianist and music teacher. Life Kühnl is the eldest child of Gudrun Kühnl (née Schmitt) from Lower Franconia and Wilhelm Kühnl who came from the Sudetenland. His musical training began in 1973, first as an external student during his last years of high school and later, as a student at the Hochschule für Musik in Würzburg, studying with Bertold Hummel (composition), Julian von Károlyi (piano), Hanns Reinartz (conducting) and Zsolt Gárdonyi (theory). Important for him at this time were analysis courses in New Music with Klaus Hinrich Stahmer and, from 1978 to 1980, the Student Chamber Orchestra “Musici Allegri”, which he himself conducted. In 1980 he successfully finished his state exam in piano and then moved to Frankfurt am Main, where he continued his studies in composition with Hans Ulrich Engelmann at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts. There he met the German composer Gerhard Müller-Hornbach, with whom he founded the Mutare Ensemble in 1981. This Frankfurt-based ensemble specialises in the performance of contemporary music and rarely performed classical music.