Helmut Kruse

1936 – 2009

Helmut Kruse was born in 1936 in Nordhausen and grew up in Lingen an der Ems and in Helmstedt. He studied music education at the Academy of Music in Freiburg im Breisgau, majoring in organ in the master class of Prof. Walter Kraft.

In 1960 he transferred to the Academy of Music and Theatre in Hanover and then to the Hanover Ecclesiastical Music School, where he passed the A examination and concert examination in 1965. Already in 1963, Helmut Kruse was cantor in Hanover, later in Helmstedt and in Rotenburg an der Wümme. From 1976 until 1999 he was Cathedral Cantor and Church Music Director at Brunswick Cathedral. There he founded and directed the Brunswick Cathedral Choir School, developed the Cathedral Choir and expand­ed the Cathe­dral Cham­ber Or­ches­tra to sym­phon­ic magnitude.

In 1988 he was awarded the Culture Prize of the Province of Lower Saxony and, in 2001, he founded the “Louis Spohr Initiative” with the aim of reviving the internationally important “Louis Spohr Music Prize of the City of Brunswick.”

Helmut Kruse concertised as an organist and conductor in almost every western and eastern European country, in Japan and South Africa, and can be heard on LPs and CDs. He died on 25 January