The classical music conductor Michael Boder has died at the age of 65, Vienna's Musiktheater an der Wien announced on Monday.
The musician died on Sunday in the Austrian capital. He had been conducting rehearsals there for a project to mark the 150th anniversary of Arnold Schönberg's birth.
Boder was considered a specialist for the music of the 20th and 21st centuries, conducting world premieres by composers such as Germany's Hans Werner Henze, Manfred Trojahn and Aribert Reimann, and Poland's Krzysztof Penderecki.
Stefan Herheim, the artistic director of the Musiktheater an der Wien, praised Boder as a highly committed musician who always wanted to get the best out of his colleagues. "Michael's heart beat for this artistic interplay until its very last beat," said Herheim.
Boder was born in the western German city of Darmstadt in 1958. After studying in Hamburg and Florence, he initially worked as Michael Gielen's assistant at the Frankfurt Opera. At the age of just 29 he was appointed music director of the opera in Basel.
He was also music director at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona from 2008 to 2012, after which he became chief conductor at Det Kongelige Teater Copenhagen.
He appeared as a guest conductor at the state operas in Berlin, Dresden, Hamburg and Munich, as well as at operas in London, San Francisco and Tokyo.