Ingeborg Reichelt

Reichelt was born in Frankfurt an der Oder studied in Dresden and at the Musikakademie in Hamburg (singing, dancing and acting). She also studied physiology. She graduated as a music teacher in 1950 and passed her concert exam as a pupil of Henny Wolff in 1953.[1]

Reichelt focused on singing oratorios and Lieder. She recorded Bach cantatas with conductors such as Helmuth Rilling, Karl Ristenpart and Kurt Thomas. She was a frequent soloist for the cycle of Bach's cantatas recorded with Fritz Werner conducting the Heinrich-Schütz-Chor Heilbronn and the Pforzheim Chamber Orchestra, including Brich dem Hungrigen dein Brot, BWV 39 with Barbara Scherler and Bruce Abel, a cantata that Bach had written for the first Sunday after Trinity of 1726.[2][3] In 1957 she recorded Bach's Mass in B minor with Werner and his choir, Helmut Krebs and Franz Kelch.[4]

Her repertoire has also included works of Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Brahms, Hans Pfitzner, Arnold Schoenberg and Hans Werner Henze.[1] She performed with the Beethovenchor Ludwigshafen Bach's Christmas Oratorio in 1957, and Ein deutsches Requiem of Brahms, conducted by Horst Stein in 1967.[5] With the Heinrich-Schütz-Chor, she performed in Handel's Messiah in 1957 and Bach's Christmas Oratorio in 1967.[6] With the Bonner Bach-Gemeinschaft she appeared in Hermann Suter's Le Laudi in 1967 and in Antonín Dvořák's Requiem in 1975.[7] She recorded songs of Igor Stravinsky, Pastorale for soprano, oboe, English horn, clarinet and bassoon, and his orchestration of Two Sacred Songs by Hugo Wolf.[8]

In 1975 she was appointed professor at the Robert Schumann Hochschule in Düsseldorf.[1] Her students have included Mechthild Georg and Andreas Schmidt.

She wrote a book Die Balance im Gesang (Balance in Singing), published by Ricordi in 2004.[9]

From 1959 until his death in 2010, Reichelt was married to the lawyer and former World War II Luftwaffe pilot Hajo Herrmann.[10][11]

She died on 27 June 2022, at the age of 94.[12]