Volker Rohde

Volker Rohde (4 May 1939 – 22 October 2000 He studied with Willy Niepold and Horst Förster at the Hochschule für Musik "Hanns Eisler". In 1978 he conducted Handel's opera Radamisto in a production by Martin Schneider. On the occasion of the Handel Festival, Halle. In 1981/82, he took over the musical direction of the production of Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber's Arminius at the Komische Oper Berlin. In 1981, he conducted with the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra Günter Neubert's Lessing Fables for tenor, choir and orchestra (with Joachim Vogt). In 1983, he became deputy chief conductor of the Dresden State Opera. In 1990, he became musical director at the Oper Leipzig. After Lothar Zagrosek's resignation as general music director in 1992, he took over the duties of the artistic director Udo Zimmermann at his request. His repertoire included among others Wagner, Rossini and Mozart. With Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre, he also took over the conducting at a contemporary opera. "The experienced but artistically pale" Rohde, according to Fritz Hennenberg, however, then had to give way to Jiří Kout.

In 1988, he was appointed professor at the Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber Dresden as professor with artistic teaching duties. He then taught at the University of Music and Theatre Leipzig, where teaching duties in conducting were combined with conducting the university symphony orchestra, which he chaired from 1992 to 1997, succeeding Christian Kluttig. From 1998, he was at the . Among his students were Roland Kluttig Henrik Schaefer and .

Guest tours took him all over Europe as a conductor and .

Awards 1969: Second place at the Dresden Carl Maria von Weber Competition for Conductors. 1974: Fourth place at the International Conducting Competition in Budapest,