Benjamin Hartmann

Benjamin Hartmann was born in 1990 in Stuttgart and received his training in conducting, singing, musical pedagogy and mathematics in Leipzig, Yale, Stockholm and Cambridge. His most important teachers have included Stephen Layton, Fredrik Malmberg, Gregor Meyer, Peter Dijkstra, Grete Pedersen and Frieder Bernius. Since 2019 he has received support from the German Music Council’s Conductors’ Forum, which has enabled him to gain further experience with the RIAS Chamber Choir, the Radio Choirs of the SWR, WDR, BR and MDR and the Stuttgart State Orchestra. As an orchestral conductor Hartmann has worked with well-known ensembles such as the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, the Jena Philharmonic, the Leipzig Symphony Orchestra and the Gaechinger Cantorey.
In 2016 Benjamin Hartmann succeeded Jürgen Budday as the director of the Maulbronn Chamber Choir, which is based at Maulbronn Monastery, an UNESCO World Heritage Site. The concert programmes that he creates are characterized by their great stylistic breadth, joy in experimentation and dramaturgical cogency, and are documented in numerous radio broadcasts and recordings. Benjamin Hartmann is currently directing a Mendelssohn cycle in Maulbronn that will run until 2026, and that will enable audiences to hear authentic performances of the composer’s sacred choral-symphonic works. Since 2016 he has also worked regularly at Stuttgart State Opera, where he has led productions for the Junge Oper, and in 2018 worked on the world premiere of Hosokawa’s Erdbeben. Träume. From 2020 to 2022 he was choirmaster of the ecumenical boys’ choir collegium iuvenum Stuttgart.
Benjamin Hartmann’s work as a speaker, author and lecturer on choral conducting has included collaborations with the Landesmusikakademie Rheinland-Pfalz, the Stockholm University College of Music Education and Cambridge University. He is chairman of the artistic advisory board of the VDKC (Association of German Concert Choirs) Baden-Württemberg, a board member of the AMJ (Working Group for Youth Music) Baden-Württemberg, a member of the advisory board for the Bundesjugendchor and a ‘National Recruiter’ for the World Youth Choir.
He first worked with the Salzburg Bach Choir in 2021, rehearsing them in preparation for a performance of Handel’s The Triumph of Time and Truth at the Brucknerhaus in Linz. In March 2022 he was appointed artistic director of the Salzburg Bach Choir.