Biography
Tilman Hoppstock (*1961) studied guitar and cello in Darmstadt and Cologne. Since 1978 he has undertaken concert tours to major cultural centres around the world. He has appeared as a soloist in cities such as Paris, London, New York, San Francisco, Berlin, Jerusalem, Athens, Istanbul, Kiev, Tokyo, Boston, Singapore, Casablanca, Martinique and Mexico City. Between 1982 and 1985 he performed more than 300 recitals in Europe and overseas.
He has also appeared in concerts and produced radio, television and commercial recordings with ensembles and chamber musicians including Christoph Prégardien, Peter Wolf, Rainer Zipperling, Duo Gruber/Maklar, the Rubio String Quartet and Alexis Weissenberg.
Hoppstock has recorded around thirty CDs, many of which have been highly praised. In 1999 he and Christoph Prégardien received the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik for their CD “Songs of Love & Death” (SIGNUM X 95-00 / Christophorus 77320).
Alongside his performing career, Hoppstock is known as a publisher of more than eighty music editions for children, chamber music groups and advanced guitar students, as well as arrangements of baroque works for solo guitar by Froberger, L. Couperin, Buxtehude and Bach. His scholarly edition of Bach’s lute works has become an internationally recognised reference. The English translations of his books “Bach’s Lute Works from the Guitarist’s Perspective” were published in 2010 and 2013 by PRIM-Musikverlag. In 2006, Schott-Music published manuscript versions of significant works by Manuel Ponce in his critical edition.
He regularly conducts musicological seminars on topics such as Bach’s fugues, Villa-Lobos’ études and preludes, the guitar music of Leo Brouwer and the harpsichord styles of Froberger, Buxtehude and Bach. He has long been a welcome guest at festivals across Europe and overseas.
Hoppstock has given concerts and masterclasses at institutions including the Royal Academy of Music in London, the Manhattan School of Music in New York and, in 2006, the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. From 2003 to 2005 he taught as guest professor at the Music University in Piteå, Sweden.
Between 1985 and 2007 he taught guitar at the Gutenberg University in Mainz. Since 1988 he has been professor for an international guitar class at the Academy of Music in Darmstadt, where he additionally teaches chamber music, guitar harmony and counterpoint.
In 2013 Hoppstock received the Darmstadt Music Award for his work as guitarist, teacher, musicologist and publisher. In 2014 he completed his doctorate with a dissertation on “The Polyphony in Bach’s Lute Fugues”.
