Windhagauer, Horst Rudolf

Windhagauer, Horst Rudolf

Horst Rudolf Windhagauer was born in 1955 at Gmunden/Austria and grew up in Nuremberg, a city in nothern Bavaria. Since 1998 he lives with his family in Bamberg.
He studied Violoncello, piano and composition in Nuremberg and Wuerzburg with Claus Reichardt and Prof. Julius Berger. He was a member of several ensembles for chamber music, so the „Trio elegiáque“, the „Arpa Trio“ and the „Cello quartet of Nuremberg“.
Since 1998 he was the leader of the cellist group at the „Chamber orchestra of Bamberg“.
In 2016 he created the „Quartetto cellistico Bamberg“. For this ensemble he wrote and adapted a number of pieces.
Several works for chambermusic he wrote during the years of 2012 until 2017 for the international wellknown ensemble the „Giocoso Quartett“.
Since 1988 he his a teacher for cello at the Highschool for music in Erlangen.
As a student for composition with Gottfried Muller, who was an expert for the music of Bach, he developed as a composer – during many years – a very personal style of music, which lies between his baroque idols, a moderate modern style and the late Richard Strauss.

Das Granatapfelhaus (A House of Pommegranates) for 2 violins, viola and violoncello

I. The Young King
II. The Birthday of the Infanta
III. The Fisherman and his Soul
IV. The Star-Child

The Young King tells the story of the illegimitate sheperd son of the recently dead king´s daughter of an unnamed country. Being his only her, he is braught to the palace to await his accession. There, he is in awe of the splendor of his new home and anxiously awaits his new crown, scepter, and robe wich are soon to be delivered. On the coronation day, the young king refuses the costume brought to him, and wears the shepherds clothing. In the cathetral a light is streaming through the windows and the bishop says that God has crowned the young king.
The Birthday of the Infanta is about a hunchbacked dwarf, sold to the palace for the amusement of the king´s daughter, the infanta, on her twelfth birthday. He dances, as he did in the woods, thoroughly unaware of his audience´s laughing at him. The dwarf mistakenly believes that the infanta must love him. Looking for her in the palace, he suddenly finds himself in front of a big mirror and is terrified by watching a monster. After he had to accept, that the monster is himself, he dies of a broken heart.
In The Fisherman and his soul, a young fisherman finds a Mermaid and wants nothing more than to marry her, but for to live underwater, he must loose his soul. A witch cuts away his soul an so he can join the Mermaid under the sea. But his Soul refuses and tries every year the fisherman to give his Soul back to his heart, until one day he tries to cut away his Soul again to give her a heart, but discovers that, once reunited, he and the Mermaid could never again be a couple. Waiting for her at the beach, one day the lifeless body of the Mermaid washes ashore, and the Fisherman helds it while the violent waves envelope him. At the end, a priest finds the drowned Fisherman cradling the dead Mermaid and buries them in an unmarked grave in the corner of a field. On this grave, every year grow wonderful flowers as a sign of God´s love.
The Star-Child is the story of an an infant boy found abandoned in the woods by a poor woodcutter, who pities him and takes him with.
He grows up to be exceedingly beautiful, but vain, cruel and arrogant, believing himself to be the divine child of the stars. One day, a beggar woman arrives in the village in search of her lost son, who the Star-Child is revealed to be. However, he scorns her and sends her away, and thus doing, he is transformed into a loathsome cross between a toad and a snake as a punishment. His followers abandon him, and he sets off to seek forgiveness from his mother. He also repents his cruelty, asks forgiveness from the animals and people he had tortured and is later crowned to a king.