* En anglais uniquement
Winfried Toll is among Germany's most versatile musicians, noted as a choral conductor, composer, educator, and sometime singer. The longtime conductor of the
Camerata Vocale Freiburg, he has also led several other top choirs in western Germany.
Toll was born in 1955 in Dorsten, in West Germany's industrial North Rhine-Westphalia state. He received a classical secondary school education at the Collegium Augustinianum Gaesdonck boarding school and went on for studies in theology and philosophy at universities in Münster and Freiburg. After passing his university exams,
Toll decided to switch to music and enrolled at the Freiburg University of Music. He studied composition with
Klaus Huber and
Brian Ferneyhough, and also took music education classes.
Toll was also active as a singer, taking master classes with Aldo Baldin and
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, and studied conducting with the famed
Bach conductor
Helmuth Rilling.
Toll has remained active in all these fields. After the completion of his studies, he worked as an opera and concert singer.
In 1988, he became the conductor of the
Camerata Vocale Freiburg, a position he continued to hold as of 2020. He has toured with that group around Germany, Europe, and the U.S.
Toll served as director of the Kölner Bach Verein in Cologne from 1994 to 2002, and he has been the artistic director of the
Frankfurter Kantorei since 1997. In 2007, he became the artistic director of the Daejeon Philharmonic Choir in South Korea and has guest conducted several German orchestras and choirs, including the
Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, the
Gürzenich Orchestra of Cologne, the SWR Vokalensemble Stuttgart, and the
RIAS Chamber Choir. Several of
Toll's compositions, including Wegkreuzze (1980), written while he was a student, have won awards, and his Reverie for choir and saxophone quartet (2001) was premiered by the
Camerata Vocale Freiburg.
Toll has made several recordings with that ensemble, mostly for the Ars Musici label; in 2020, he and the
Camerata Vocale Freiburg recorded the Requiem, Op. 144b, of Joseph Rheinberger for an album on Solo Musica that also included
Mahler's Rückert-Lieder, sung by tenor
Christoph Prégardien.
Toll has taught singing at his alma mater, the Freiburg University of Music.