He studied both guitar and cello in Darmstadt and Cologne. His concert career began in 1978 and brought him to about 40 countries all over the world. Invitations to international music festivals in Europe and overseas, as well as to the Royal Academy of Music (London), the Manhattan School of Music (New York) and the University of Southern California (Los Angeles), have been further highlights of his multifaceted career. 2003 - 2005 he was invited to teach as a guest professor at the Music University in Piteå (Sweden). He has made several radio, television and commercial recordings, both solo and with other musicians including the pianistAlexis Weissenberg, tenor Christoph Prégardien, cellist Peter Wolf and the Rubio String Quartet. He also publishes music, including songs by Schubert, modern works written specially for him (Karl-Wieland Kurz's I giardini del sogno,[1] for example), his own compositions and arrangements of music from the Baroque period. Besides his career as a recitalist, Hoppstock teaches international guitar classes at the Akademie für Tonkunst Darmstadt (Academy of Music at Darmstadt, Germany). In 2013 Tilman Hoppstock has received the ”Darmstadt Music Award 2013” for his livework as guitarist, teacher, musicologist and publisher. In 2014 he obtained one's doctorate with his dissertation about 'The Polyphony in Bach's Lute Fugues'.[2]
Hoppstock is an exceptional player, with a fine sense of style and unfailing sensitivity, and a technician of the first water; his tone is refined and beautifully nuanced, his delivery is clean and sure even in the passages where the utmost dexterity is called for, and his command of varied articulation is admirable Gramophone (2/1998)[3]
A playful interchange of light and dark shades with endless worlds of sound full of passion and conscientiousness...Tilman Hoppstock belongs to those artists who make you forget the instrument. Alexis Weissenberg (Paris, 1992)[4]
Tilman Hoppstock‘s perfect performance, his extreme sensibility and a broad range of timbres and nuances, but also this extraordinary articulation in his playing makes him to one of the greatest guitarists in our century. Les Cahiers de la Guitare (Paris, No. 66/1998)[5]
The work is quite an extraordinary achievement and emphasizes how Hoppstock’s evolution through the years of interpreting Bach is of itself a fascinating aspect of his musicianship which deserves close attention. The quality of these recordings is first-class throughout and superbly well re-mastered, so there is none of the jarring technological dislocation that often afflicts compilations of tracks from various years. This is a recording which should be on every self-respecting guitarist’s shelf, no doubt cheek-by-jowl with Hoppstock’s published books on Bach. Classical Guitar Magazine, 12/2014[6]
Bach: The lutework and related compositions in urtext for guitar (Prim-Musikverlag)
Graham Wade in english "Classical Guitar Magazine" Dec. 2014
Home page
Tilman Hoppstock - 2006 Interview with lacg (Los Angeles Classical Guitar) about Villa-Lobos study n.7, Bach's Gavotta en Rondeau BWV 1006a and Sarabande BWV 825, etc.
