Memories of the Head of the Music Department of Westdeutscher Rundfunk (1976-1987), a great and lasting promoter of music at WDR, in the city of Cologne and in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Memories of the Head of the Music Department at Westdeutscher Rundfunk (1976-1987), a great and lasting promoter of music at WDR, in the city of Cologne and in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, whose wealth of ideas and creativity gave the station’s entire music program – from folk music, music cultures, pop, rock and jazz to classical and new music – an incomparable flourishing, from which the musical life of the city of Cologne and the state of NRW also benefited and still benefits today.
He would have been 100 years old on October 22nd, 2024: Prof. Dr. Alfred Krings. Passing away far too early in 1987, he left a huge gap in musical life, and not just at WDR. It was only after many years that I realized what this man had achieved during his time as Head of the Music Department. He was jointly responsible for the complete recordings of the Schubert and Bruckner symphonies by the WDR Symphony Orchestra under Günter Wand, established contacts in Japan and paved the way for the recording of all Mahler symphonies under Gary Bertini in the Suntory Hall in Tokyo – for many, these recordings are still reference recordings of these symphonies today. It is also due to his work that WDR contributed to the construction of the Cologne Philharmonic Hall and that the WDR Symphony Orchestra has been able to call this wonderful hall its home ever since. Once again, he turned the large broadcasting hall into an important concert venue for the city of Cologne and thus into what it could be today: the city’s chamber music hall, which is so sorely missed.
Although a proven expert in early music, he knew no boundaries between early and new music, jazz, folk, folk music or non-European art music. He was responsible for founding the WDR Big Band, set up separate editorial offices for early music and jazz and made WDR the largest concert organizer in NRW, e.g. with the series of chamber concerts in NRW. WDR’s own orchestras now also played more and more frequently in the broadcasting area. In 1984, he took up the tradition of the Rhenish Music Festivals, which then also enriched concert life in one region of NRW at a time as the Westphalian Music Festival. He gave the editors a great deal of leeway in realizing their ideas and was himself a decisive manager of his music department, which was of course structured differently back then than it is today.
His passion was early music, which is why Cologne was long regarded as one of the most important centers in Europe thanks to WDR’s commitment in this field. His achievements and those of his editorial team are documented by countless productions or have manifested themselves, for example, through the founding of the Tage für Alte Musik in Herne. He was also involved in the idea of a Romanesque Night – a musical tour through the Romanesque churches of Cologne. He also had his eye on New Music and its editorial department, which had the highest budget of all ARD stations under his aegis, thus continuing the great tradition of WDR in this field, the Days for New Chamber Music in Witten had his support, as did the jazz department he set up, which promoted numerous clubs and festivals through recordings, but was also able to carry out its own high-level productions
I think of him as an enterprising, knowledgeable, imaginative and always decisive person, with whom it was not always easy to work together, but whose achievements shaped and promoted the musical life of WDR, the city of Cologne and NRW in the long term.
Hans Martin Müller, Cologne, September 2024