Artist Detailed Info: Andre Asriel

André Asriel (* 22. February 1922 in Vienna) is an Austrian-German composer.

Asriel first attended the Akademisches Gymnasium and then the Bundesgymnasium IX (Wasagymnasium) in Vienna, where the later Oscar-winner and composer Ernest Gold was his classmate. Here he simultaneously pursued musical studies and studied piano with Grete Hinterhofer and theory with Richard Stöhr at the State Academy of Music in Vienna from 1936 to 1938. He was extraordinarily gifted and an outstanding pianist even at a young age.
After the occupation of Austria by Nazi Germany, his mother ensured that her 16-year-old son Andre could emigrate to England at the end of 1938 as a racially persecuted person. She herself was no longer able to escape. With the beginning of the war in September 1939 all connections to her old homeland and her family were severed. Music also belonged to his interest abroad, but he did not know how to start and finance a suitable course of study. Through an encounter with the later poet Erich Fried - also a former student of the Wasagymnasium - he found contact to the exile organization "Freie Deutsche Jugend" (FDJ), which also financed his studies. Asriel took over the leadership of the London FDJ Choir and found friends among its members. As a licentiate of the Royal Academy of Music (L.R.A.M.) he continued his studies from 1941 with Franz Osborn (piano) and Ernst Hermann Meyer (composition).
His gratitude to the FDJ led Asriel to Germany in 1946, where he helped to build up socialism. In 1946 he continued his exiled music studies at the Hochschule für Musik in the western part of Berlin with Reinhard Schwarz-Schilling and Hermann Wunsch (composition) and Richard Rössler (piano). In 1948 he passed his state examination in piano. From 1950 to 1951 he was a master student of Hanns Eisler at the German Academy of Arts (East Berlin). From 1950 to 1967 he was a lecturer and then professor of composition at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music in Berlin (GDR). He was emeritus in 1980.
Asriel became known above all for his songs. But also the film music was an important field of activity for him. He wrote the music for more than 30 movies. He also composed chansons, ballads, chamber, vocal and instrumental music. Many of his compositions are influenced by jazz music.
Asriel was awarded the GDR National Prize in 1951, the FDGB Art Prize in 1970 and the Patriotic Order of Merit in 1974 and 1982.

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