Hermann Kretzschmar studied music and German and then piano with Bernhard Ebert in Hannover. He joined the Ensemble Modern in 1985. He, Catherine Milliken and Dietmar Wiesner founded HCD-Productions in 1994. Releases on CD have included Migrations (works by Paul Bowles), Surface Tension (works by Howard Skempton), Denotation Babel (1999 Prix Italia), Cosmic Memos after Calvino and Die Blüte des nackten Körpers / The Bloom of the Naked Body (Raoul Schrott, 2011). Audio pieces created by Kretzschmar since 2001 include: Zur Zeit-revisited / Time Revisited (2001/3), John Cage's Stufen / Steps (2002), Strahlungen / Radiation (audio piece of the month of May 2004), Harmonies of Paradise (2006), Doctor Faustus (2007), Arnold auf dem schönen Berg (2009), Der Tod in Rom / Death in Rome (2009), Het Witte Kind / The White Child (2010), Kuno Kohn's Capriccio (2011), Soundcuts Wasserkuppe (2011) and Superpslam (2016). In 2016 an audio book of the novel Manhattan Transfer after John Dos Passos, adapted by Kretzschmar and Leonhard Koppelmann was released by Hörbuch Hamburg, his two early audio works Zur Zeit-revisited / Time Revisited and John Cage's Stufen (with speakers Walter Zimmermann, Fredric Rzewski, Hans Zender and Dieter Schnebel) by belleville Verlag (2017). SaVaSa Games for brass trio and Sodom and Gomorrha after Marcel Proust with the Ensemble Modern (Hörverlag München) - all 2017 - and Das Bad im Knall /Bathing in an Explosion (SWR-Hörstück, 2018). He is currently working on another audio book based on Proust's Die Gefangene / The Prisoner (with the Ensemble Modern) and Die 32 Scansonaten (all of Beethoven's sonatas in 85 minutes), which can be heard on SWR's website. He released Knott's piano, works 1991-2007 on his portrait CD with Ensemble Modern Medien. In 2020 he adapted Mauricio Kagel's Ludwig van for the Ensemble, in which he played the piano solo.