Biographie

Dr Axel Flierl was born in Nuremberg in 1976 and grew up in the Allgäu. He studied organ, organ improvisation and Catholic church music in Munich and Paris and musicology in Karlsruhe. His formative teachers were Prof. Edgar Krapp, Wolfgang Hörlin, Prof. Thierry Escaich and Vincent Warnier.

He completed his decades-long study of the work and person of Karl Höller (1907-1987) with a musicological dissertation on Höller's organ works under Prof. Dr. Thomas Seedorf, a previously unexplored chapter of German music history. Axel Flierl is considered a leading researcher on Karl Höller and an interpreter of his organ works in particular.

In 2006, he was appointed principal organist and conductor at the papal basilica minor of St. Peter in Dillingen an der Donau (Bavaria), the co-cathedral and second cathedral church of the diocese of Augsburg, and has turned this place into a centre of church music with charisma extending far beyond the borders of the region. For example, he initiated the international organ festival Dillingen Basilica Concerts around the large Sandtner organ. He has also performed the complete organ works of Karl Höller and Maurice Duruflé.

Concerts as an organ soloist and as a lecturer at master classes regularly take him to the leading organ centres in Australia, Hong-Kong, USA, Russia, Kazakhstan, Abkhazia, South America, South Africa, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Iceland and almost all European countries.

He has also held a visiting professorship at the Pontificio Istituto di Musica sacra, the Pontifical Conservatory of Music in Rome, since 2022.

He has also made radio and television recordings, several CD recordings and is an author of books.

Next concerts

20. April 2025, 10:00 a.m.
Dillingen | Basilica of St. Peter | High Mass at Easter

Joseph Haydn, Missa in tempore belli in C major (“timpani mass”)
Georg Friedrich Händel, “Hallelujah” from Messiah
for soloists, choir and orchestra

Liljana Winkler, (soprano)
Anna Ziegelmeir (mezzo-soprano)
Moon-Yung Oh (tenor)
Werner Rollenmüller (bass)

Dillingen Basilica Choir
Members of the Ulm Philharmonic Orchestra
Axel Flierl (conductor)

18. April 2025, 3:00 p.m.
Dillingen | Basilica of St. Peter | Good Friday Liturgy

Sacred music for violin and organ

Ludwig Hornung (violin)
Women's choir of St. Peter's Basilica
Axel Flierl (conductor and chest organ)

13. March 2025, 9:00 p.m.
Vila Real (P) | Catedral | Masconi organ (2017/IV/34)

Works by Bach, Bossi, Torres and Franck

Publications

Article
Franziskus und der Sultan.
Khalil Rahmes geistliche Oper
„San Francesco e il Sultano“

in: Musik und Kirche 94 (2024),
issue 6, page 374-376

read article>