Gabriel Dessauer is a German cantor, concert organist, and academic teacher. After studies with Diethard Hellmann and Franz Lehrndorfer, he was responsible for the church music at St. Bonifatius, Wiesbaden from 1981 to 2021, conducting the Chor von St. Bonifatius until 2018. Besides normal church services, he conducted them in regular masses with soloists and orchestra for Christmas and Easter and a yearly concert. In 1995 he prepared the choir for a memorial concert commemorating the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, performing Britten's War Requiem with choirs from countries involved in the war, and concerts in Wiesbaden and Macon, Georgia. Programs of choral concerts included Hermann Suter's Le Laudi in 1998, the German premiere of Rutter's Mass of the Children in 2004, and the world premiere of Colin Mawby's Bonifatiusmess in 2012 which he had commissioned for the choir's 150th anniversary. The concert of 2008, Vivaldi's Gloria and Haydn's Nelson Mass, was also performed at San Paolo dentro le Mura in Rome.
Dessauer in 2022
St. Bonifatius, Wiesbaden, interior from the organ loft, photograph by Dessauer
Gabriel Dessauer conducting the Chor von St. Bonifatius, 2012
Gabriel Dessauer and Colin Mawby after the premiere of the Bonifatius-Messe on 3 October 2012
Diethard Hellmann was a German Kantor, composer and academic teacher, first in Leipzig at the Friedenskirche and the Musikhochschule, then from 1955 in Mainz at the Christuskirche and the Peter Cornelius Conservatory, finally in Munich where he was president of the Musikhochschule München from 1981 to 1988. He was known for a weekly Bach cantata in Mainz, broadcast by SWR.
Hellmanns in 1953
Christuskirche, Mainz, view from the west