Wolfgang Baumgratz

Born in Meersburg, Baumgratz received his musical training in Heidelberg and Freiburg im Breisgau, where he passed the A-examination in Protestant church music in 1976 and worked as cantor at the Johanneskirche in Merzhausen from 1971 to 1976. He completed two years of organ studies on a scholarship from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD), studying in Amsterdam with Albert de Klerk. In 1978, he completed the soloist's examination in organ.[1]

In 1979, Baumgratz was appointed as successor of Zsigmond Szathmáry as cathedral organist at the St. Petri-Dom in Bremen. One year later he received an organ teacher position at the Hochschule für Künste Bremen (HfK Bremen), and in 1984, he was appointed professor of organ. Five years later he was appointed head of the HfK Bremen church music department.

Since 1982, he has been the organ expert of the Bremen Protestant Church. In 1990, he took over the office of Vice President of the international Gesellschaft der Orgelfreunde e. V. (GdO), to whose presidency he was elected in 1998. When he retired in 2014, Baumgratz took over an organist position at the Protestant St. Remberti congregation in Bremen (in addition to being a full-time church musician), whose Fischer+Krämer organ (1993/94) he had helped design.

His concert tours as an organist have taken him through many European countries, and he has made numerous recordings on LP and CD.

• Werke für Orgel und Violine, Gitarre, Flöte, Englischhorn by Claus Kühnl u. a.
• Werke von Bach und Händel in romantischen Orgelbearbeitungen (Die Sauer-Orgel im Bremer Dom)
• Orgellandschaft Schleswig/Sonderjylland
• Romantische Orgeln in Holstein
• Schnitger-Orgel Grasberg; Werke von Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer
• Das Orgelwerk von Wilhelm Friedemann Bach
• Orgellandschaft Holstein/Lübeck
• Orgelmusik von Komponistinnen (Wilhelm-Sauer-Orgel im St. Petri-Dom Bremen; Schumann, Andree, Chaminade)
• Orgelwerke von Georg Philipp Telemann
• Orgelmusik der Bachfamilie
• Silbermann Orgel Vol. 6 Works by Schneider, Bestel, Homilius
• Joseph Rheinberger Orgelwerke (Vol. 7), gespielt an der Sauer-Orgel im St. Petri-Dom zu Bremen
• Inventionen & Sinfonien von Johann Sebastian Bach
• J. S. Bach, 6 Triosonaten
• Orgelmusik by Albert De Klerk
• Orgelkonzert im Dom zu Bremen – Kompositionen über das Te Deum

• Literature by and about Wolfgang Baumgratz in the German National Library catalogue
• Wolfgang Baumgratz discography at Discogs