Enno Poppe

Enno Poppe, born on December 30th 1969 in Hemer, is one of the most important composers in Germany. He has lived and worked in Berlin since 1990.
Poppe studied conducting and composition at the Berlin University of the Arts under Friedrich Goldmann and Gösta Neuwirth, among others. This was followed by further studies in the fields of sound synthesis and algorithmic composition at the Technical University of Berlin and the Centre for Art and Media in Karlsruhe. As a conductor, Enno Poppe regularly performs with Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Musikfabrik and Ensemble Resonanz as well as with international orchestras. He has been a member and conductor of ensemble mosaik since 1998. Enno Poppe has taught composition at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music in Berlin, at the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music and at the Impuls Academy (Graz).
Enno Poppe has received commissions from ensembles throughout Europe and beyond, from orchestras such as the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and the WDR Symphony Orchestra, as well as from festivals such as the Donaueschinger Musiktage, the Salzburg Festival, musica viva (Munich), Ultraschall Berlin, MaerzMusik (Berlin), Eclat (Stuttgart) and the Wittener Tage für Neue Kammermusik.
Enno Poppe’s works have been performed by quartets such as the Arditti Quartet and the Kairos Quartet, conductors such as Pierre Boulez, Susanna Mälkki, Emilio Pomárico and Peter Rundel, and orchestras such as the SWR Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie. Ensembles that regularly perform his music include the Ensemble intercontemporain, the Ensemble Modern, the London Sinfonietta, the Ensemble Resonanz, the Klangforum Wien, the ensemble mosaik, the Ensemble Contrechamps, the Ensemble Musikfabrik, the Ensemble 2e2m, the SWR Vokalensemble and the Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart.
With Interzone (2003-2004), Enno Poppe created a composition for voices, video and ensemble in which the writer Marcel Beyer (who also wrote the libretti for the other music theatre works) paraphrases a text by William S. Burroughs that deals with Tangier/Morocco, a melting pot of different cultures. The music theatre piece Arbeit Nahrung Wohnung (2006-2007) is a fragmented Robinson Cruseo story about loneliness – and a protagonist who does not attach much importance to being rescued. In IQ (2011-2012), Poppe puts together a test station for intelligence in eight acts, in which the various test subjects ‘always return to the beginning in order to start again’.
In addition to scholarships – including from the Akademie Schloss Solitude and the Villa Serpentara in Olevano Romano – Enno Poppe has received numerous awards such as the Busoni Composition Prize of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin (2002), the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation Prize, the Schneider-Schott Music Prize (2005), the Förderpreis der Akademie der Künste in Berlin (2006) and the Christoph and Stephan Kaske Prize (2009). Enno Poppe also received the ‘Happy New Ears’ prize from the Hans and Gertrud Zender Foundation (2011), the Hans Werner Henze Prize (2013) and the German Music Authors’ Prize in 2016.
Enno Poppe is a member of the Akademie der Künste Berlin (since 2008), the Nordrhein-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Künste (since 2009) and the Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste (since 2010).