Anthony Plog on Music

Conversations with performers, composers, and entrepreneurs


Become a Contributing Listener!

As a Contributing Listener of "Anthony Plog on Music" you'll have access to extra premium content and benefits including:
  • Extra Audio Content: Only available to Contributing Listeners.
  • Podcast Reflections: Tony's written recaps and thoughts on past interviews (including valuable tips and suggestions for students) going all the way back to his first interviews in 2020.
  • Ask Me Anything: Both as written messages and occasional member-only Zoom sessions.
  • The Show's Discord Server: Where conversations about past interviews, show suggestions, and questions happen. It's a great place to meet other listeners and chat about all things music!
  • Can I just donate instead of subscribing? Absolutely!
  • Cancel at anytime and easily resubscribe when you want all the extra content again.



Ludwig Holtmeier, Music Theorist, Piano Player, and Rector of the Freiburg Hochshule für Musik

Anthony Plog, host
Eddie Ludema, producer

Date posted: Nov 3, 2022

Ludwig Holtmeier has been Rector at the Freiburg Musik Hochschule since October 2017. Before taking the job as Rector, he taught theory at the Hochschule and earlier was a musicologist at the Hans Eisler Musik Hochschule in Berlin. He also taught at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel, Switzerland. In addition, he is an accomplished pianist and theorist, so he has a broad and deep understanding of music and teaching.

Part 1

In Part 1 of our conversation, I ask Professor Holtmeier to discuss some of the differences between the Musik Hochschule in Freiburg and music schools and conservatories in the United States. He also talks about some of his duties as Rector and how faculty mindsets can vary depending on the instrument involved.

Part 2

A Rector of a Musik Hochschule has many challenges, but perhaps the biggest that Ludwig Holtmeier had to face was the Covid crisis. Our interview was recorded in 2021, and a large portion of our conversation deals with the steps taken that allowed the Freiburg Musik Hochschule to be the only Hochschule that consistently remained open during that difficult time. But first we begin our conversation by continuing our discussion of the differences between German and American schools.

Bonus Room

In the Bonus Room, I ask Professor Holtmeier a number of questions about music in general... Is tonality dead? What is the future of music? What was musical training like during the time of Franz Liszt? And finally, comic books!

The podcast theme music, Four Sierra Scenes, written by Anthony Plog, is taken from Crystal Records S205, copyright ©1980 Crystal Records Inc., and is used by permission. Unauthorized duplication is not permitted.