The Scheuch Family
In 1970 Barbara Scheuch-Vötterle (b. 27 November 1947 in Kassel), the daughter of Karl Vötterle and Hildegard Vötterle née Schaub (1914–1998), joined Bärenreiter. Following her father’s death in 1975, she became Managing Director and since 1976, has managed the company jointly with her husband Leonhard Scheuch (b. 21 May 1938 in Winterthur, Switzerland).
Under their management, the course for the future of the company has been set. The 1980s saw an extensive restructuring of the business with regard to the organisation and the publishing programme. In addition to the explicit decision to have a continued commitment to contemporary music, a close collaboration with musicological research as well as the development of the music pedagogy programme, the promotion to establish “Bärenreiter-Urtext” as the brandname was actively conducted.
In an honorary capacity, Barbara Scheuch-Vötterle is a member of the managing committees of the Kasseler Musiktage and the Landgraf-Moritz-Stiftung. She has received numerous awards for her special contributions over and above her professional duties. In 1999 she was awarded the Goethe Badge by the German Federal State of Hesse, in 2005 she became an honorary member of the Gesellschaft für Musikforschung (Society for Music Research) and the Deutscher Musikrat, and in March 2007, she was made an honorary professor of the Federal State of Hesse.
After studying theatre arts at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich and the University of Vienna, Leonhard Scheuch undertook internships in opera directing in Berlin, Hamburg and Munich. From 1967 until he joined Bärenreiter, he worked as a literary and artistic director at the Zurich Opera House. The gradual development of the opera programme, the concentrated promotion of contemporary music and the book publishing programme are his special areas of interest. He is particularly credited with having excellent contacts with the Czech Republic, beginning with the founding of the subsidiary Bärenreiter-Verlag Basel AG in Prague in 1991. This took the former Czechoslovakian state-owned publisher Supraphon into privatisation and has been operating as Editio Bärenreiter Praha since 1998 and as Bärenreiter Praha since 2011.
Outside his publishing work, Leonhard Scheuch is involved with music-cultural issues. This includes being a founder member of the Swiss Janácek Society and the chairman of the committee “Initiative Pro A” which strives to keep the Kassel Staatstheater orchestra as an ‘A’ (top) classified orchestra.
Clemens Scheuch, who has been a member of the Executive Board since 2011, has become the third Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Bärenreiter publishing house effective as of 1 January 2021, thus heading the Kassel-based music publisher together with his parents Prof. Barbara Scheuch-Vötterle and Leonhard Scheuch.
Clemens Scheuch (b. 1980) is a trained sound engineer. In 2007, he initially joined the well-established company as Assistant to the Management. At the time he was primarily responsible for the areas of sales as well as product controlling and was General Manager of the Kassel Groß-Auslieferung which is a part of the Bärenreiter Company Group. Soon after, he started to dedicate himself to the development of the new media business by counterbalancing Bärenreiter’s existing high-quality print editions with digital products. In an organic process of change, that ensured the continued existence of the soon to be hundred-year-old publishing house with appr. 120 employees in Kassel, Prague and London, he progressively expanded his activities into all areas of the company's operations. Clemens Scheuch became CEO of the Kassel Groß-Auslieferung in August 2014 as well as of the subsidiaries Bärenreiter Basel and Bärenreiter Ltd., Harlow/Essex, England in August 2014 and June 2016 respectively. Not only has Clemens Scheuch been appointed CEO of Bärenreiter, but at the same time he now holds this position for the stage agency Alkor-Edition and Neuwerk Buch- und Musikalienhandlung. He is Vice President of the German Music Publishers Association.
His brother Claudius Scheuch (b. 25 September 1976) works closely with Bärenreiter in the area of corporate image and design.