David de Villiers - Conductor

David de Villiers
Conductor

David Pieter de Villiers was born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1944. He first studied in South Africa and then furthered his studies in Germany. After starting as coach in the opera house of Frankfurt am Main, he was permanent conductor there from 1977 to1982.

From 1983 to 1986 David de Villiers was Musical Director of the chamber orchestera Ad Artem de Metz (France) and from 1984 to 1991 first Kapellmeister and Vice Musical Director of the opera house in Bielefeld (Germany) which, during this time, found international acclaim for its programme of rediscovering and performing unknown operas. Some of these works performed under his baton were: Zèmire und Azor (Grétry), Transatlantik (George Antheil), Neues vom Tage (Hindemith), Die Ersten Menschen (Rudi Stephan), Ausgerechnet und Verspielt, Die Zwingburg (Krenek), Fenimore and Gerda (Delius), das Wunder der Heliane (Korngold), La Bohéme (Leoncavallo), La Juive (Halévi) and Nixon in China (Adams). A live recording of Der Sprung über den Schatten (Krenek) was released on CD.

David de Villiers conducted symphony orchestras in Germany, Switzerland, France, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia, South Africa, Italy and Korea and lead concert tours of the Cape Town Symphony Orchestera to Taiwan as well as the Philharmonique de Lorraine to Germany. He made recordings of contemporary music by Victor Fenigstein with the Symphony Orchestera of Radio Luxemburg as well as CDs with the Radio Orchestra of the West-German Radio (WDR) in Cologne (JMT) with several soloists such as the Arcado Trio, Marilyn Crispell, Jusuf Lateef, John Taylor, Django Bates, John Surman and others.This also included world first performances of works by Manfred Niehaus, Peter Michael Hamel, Joachim Kühn and Gerry Hemingway.

In the opera companies of Metz, Festival de Carpentras, Eutin, Pretoria and Cape Town, he conducted new productions of the Magic Flute, Le Pescatrici, Les pèllerins de Mecque, Wozzeck, Butterfly, Tosca, Rigoletto, Faust, Carmen, Barber of Seville and Rigoletto.

David de Villiers was Musical Director (Generalmusikdirektor) of the Symphony Orchestra and Opera House (Stadttheater) in Giessen, Germany, from August 1991 to July 1997. There he conducted three to four operas per year and most of the symphony concerts, children's concerts and serenade concerts.

Starting in 1995, David de Villiers lead the conducting class in the Folkwang-Hochschule (now called the "Folkwang Universität der Künste") in Essen. In May, 1998 he was appointed Professor there for the orchestral conducting class and the symphony orchestra of the Hochschule. From October 2001 to June 2003 he simultaneously was professor at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg, where he conducted the symphony orchestra. After being pensioned in Essen, he was professor for the conducting class in Leipzig for two years and then also, as colleague of Prof. Ulrich Windfuhr, in the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg until November 2020.


From September 2003 to July 2006, simultaneosly  with being professor in Essen, he was the chief conductor of the Radio Symphony Orchestra of the RTV Slovenia in Ljubljana. There he conducted the main abonnement concerts of the orchestra and did many recordings for radio and television, including several live broadcasts throughout Europe. He also coducted crossover concerts with "Siddharta" on 13th September 2003 in the Bezigrad Stadion Ljubljana, with “Terrafolk” in September 2005 in Krizanke, Ljubljana, and “Dan D” on 13th and 14th September 2009, also in the Krizanke Stadion Ljubljana.