Hailed by the New York Times as “a brilliant soloist” who “played with extraordinary precision and luminosity”, violinist Fabiola Kim is one of the most dynamic players of her generation with a wide variety of repertoire from classical to contemporary music. Her recent engagements include a recording with the Munich Symphony Orchestra, premiering a piece written by Esa-Pekka Salonen for which the Strings Magazine described “played with serene purity”, concert engagements at the Aspen Music Festival, the Munich Symphony Orchestra, Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra, Berlin Symphony Orchestra and Owensboro symphony Orchestra.. After beginning her studies at the age of four, she made her concerto debut with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra just three years later. Ms. Kim is the winner of various awards and competitions, including the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra’s Concerto Competition as the youngest competitor in the history of the competition to win.

Since then, she has won the Aspen Music Festival Violin Concerto Competition, Livingston Symphony Orchestra Young Artists Concerto Competition, the Kumho Prodigy Music Award, an award given to the most promising young musicians in Korea, and was a prize winner at Corpus Christi International Competition and the Irving M. Klein International Competition for Strings.

She has collaborated with conductors such as Alan Gilbert, Gilbert Varga, Jane Glover, and Nicholas McGegan. Her past solo performances include engagements with the Seoul and Suwon Philharmonics; a European tour with Suwon Philharmonic Orchestra to the Bruckner Festival in Linz and Merano Festival in Merano, Italy, the Juilliard Orchestra, Aspen Philharmonia, the Kangnam, Korean, Broward, and Prime Symphony Orchestras; the Livingston Symphony; Cologne Chamber Orchestra; North Czech Philharmonic Orchestra; the American Academy of Conducting at Aspen, Orquestra Sinfonica OSUANL, the Budapest Symphony Orchestra MAV, the Hofer Sinfoniker, Korean Chamber Orchestra, Westdeutsche Sinfonia, and Colburn Orchestra.

In addition to her solo engagements, Ms. Kim has a passion for orchestral repertoire, has been featured on the radio, and plays outreach concerts. She regularly performs as concertmaster of the Colburn Orchestra, and served as concertmaster of the Juilliard Orchestra. In addition, she was concertmaster for the New York String Orchestra Seminar in 2012.  Her outreach concerts have taken her all over New York, and she has participated in a week-long residency at Juilliard in Aiken in South Carolina. Her radio appearances have been featured on NPR’s From the Top and The Young Artists Showcase on WQXR New York. An avid chamber musician, she has performed at festivals like Ravinia Steans Institute, Aspen Music Festival, Verbier Festival and La Jolla Music Society Summerfest.

Ms. Kim’s concerts have taken her all across the globe, as she has performed throughout North America, Mexico, Europe, Japan, and South Korea, performing at well known venues such as Carnegie Hall, Berlin Philharmonie, Avery Fischer and Alice Tully at Lincoln Center, the Seoul and Kumho Arts Centers, the Kimmel Center, the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, and the Auditorium Conciliazione.

Ms. Kim is an Artist Diplomia recipient at the Colburn School under the guidance of Robert Lipsett, and she is a Bachelor and Master of Music recipient of Juilliard under the tutelage of Sylvia Rosenberg and Ronald Copes. Her former teachers and mentors include Kyung Wha Chung, Namyun Kim and Choongjin Chang. She is now on faculty for Community School of Performing Arts at the Colburn School.

“…from the first note until the final chord, Duo Froschhammer captivated the audience with the outstanding force of their technical skill and their natural musical instinct.” Neue Musikzeitung (NMZ)

 The Duo Froschhammer features siblings Felix Froschhammer, violin, and Julia Froschhammer, piano. Founded in 1998, the Duo has since performed in Switzerland, Germany, Italy, France, Malta and at the famous Atheneum in Bucharest. Together they are prize winners of the International Wolfgang Jacobi Competition for 20th century chamber music and have been recipients of scholarships from the Bavarian Music Fund.

German violinist Felix Froschhammer captivates audiences with his wide-ranging performance skills. First Violinist of the casalQuartett and Concert Master of both the Ensemble Symphonique Neuchâtel and Sinfonietta de Lausanne (Switzerland), Felix is also active as a soloist and plays an important role in the Ensemble Chaarts and Tri i Dve, a Quintet specialising in Balkan music. 

Previous engagements include appearances at festivals including Salzburger Festspiele, Gstaad Menuhin Festival, Rheingau Musikfestival and Lucerne Festival, as well as at world-renowned venues in Shanghai, Bangkok, Moscow, Singapore, Milan and Paris. Felix’s performances have been broadcast on Radio France, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Österreichischer Rundfunk, Südwestdeutscher Rundfunk, Deutschlandfunk, Radio Suisse Romande Espace 2, France 2, Arte TV and Mezzo. His chamber music partners include Gautier Capuçon, Lawrence Power, Fazil Say, Felicity Lott and Maximilian Hornung.  Since 2018 he has been the Artistic Director of the Festival du Jura in Switzerland.

Born in Munich, Felix started studying the violin at the age of seven with Olga Voitova, making his orchestral debut at the age of ten with the Münchner Rundfunkorchester.  He then went on to study with Pierre Amoyal and Salvatore Accardo, graduating from the Haute école de musique de Lausanne (HEMU) with highest honours in 2007, and later receiving a special prize from the Sinfonietta de Lausanne for his professional achievements. Together with Amoyal and the Camerata de Lausanne Felix was soloist in the Vivaldi and Bach Double Concertos on several international tours and broadcasts.

Felix has recorded works for violin and cello on the label ArcoDiva and records regularly for the Solo Musica label with the casalQuartett. His most recent CDs have won prizes at Echo Klassik, the German Record Critics’ Awards and the Supersonic Awards.

www.felixfroschhammer.com

Born in Munich, Julia Froschhammer began studying the piano at the age of six with her father, the pianist and composer Fritz Froschhammer. A prize winner of several national competitions, she obtained her artistic diploma with Vadim Suchanov at the Richard Strauss Conservatory, Munich, and joined the Haute école de musique de Lausanne (HEMU) in 2002, studying with Jean-François Antonioli. In 2007, she completed her studies with the prestigious soloist’s diploma and was awarded the Paderewski Prize and the Ganz Prize.

Julia performs regularly as a chamber musician and soloist throughout Europe. Together with harpist Céline Gay des Combes she also enjoys performing as part of the Duo Harpian, a rare harp and piano duo which can be heard on Radio France Musique, Radio Espace 2, SRF and Radio Classique. Recently they have performed for the Swiss Embassy in Washington (USA) and released a CD of French and Spanish music on the Swiss label VDE Gallo. The duo often commissions new works, and in 2016, the Swiss composer Jean Froidevaux dedicated a work to them. With her new ensemble, Pianofolie, Julia performs with three other pianists at one piano, combining music and comedy.

Alongside her concert career Julia shares her passion for music through teaching, notably as Professor of piano at the Institute de Ribaupierre (EML) in Lausanne. As an accomplished artist Julia also expresses herself through painting. Her work can be found on her online art gallery, JuArt, and at regular exhibitions and concerts combining music and art. Some of her Nordic paintings illustrate the booklet of this CD.

www.juliafroschhammer.com

Helen Buchholtz (1877-1953)

Charlotte Helena Buchholtz was born on 24^th November 1877 in Esch-sur-Alzette, a small city in the south of Luxembourg. Her father, Daniel Buchholtz, was an ironmonger but also traded in household utensils and building materials. On top of that, he was the founder of the very successful Buchholtz Brewery. Little is known about Helen Buchholtz’s early musical education. According to her nephew, François Ettinger, she was interested in music, literature and art from a very young age and was taught the piano, the violin, music theory and composition.

As neither the music conservatory in Esch, nor the one in Luxembourg-City existed at the time, the only way to acquire a musical education was by taking private lessons or by joining a music association or choir. In those days, such associations open to women were rare. There were numerous music bands in Luxembourg but most of them were brass bands with a heavily military repertoire, which only accepted male members and this until well into the 20^th century. Women were much luckier with choirs which had opened up to them in the 19^th century already. Before then, these had also only been exclusively reserved to men. The Saint-Joseph Cäcilienverein in Esch, founded in 1815, was a mixed choir from the 1870s onwards and also acted as an institution that provided music teaching and training. We can assume, without the shadow of a doubt, that Helen Buchholtz’s talent was encouraged by other members of the family, especially since her father and uncle belonged to the circle of local music enthusiasts. The brothers also entertained a close friendship with Felix Krein (1831-1888), the most famous musician in Esch at the time and possibly the young girl’s first music teacher.

As was the custom among the aristocratic and bourgeois families of the time, Helen Buchholtz – like her sisters – attended the Pensionnat des Mesdames Métro-Bastien, a girls’ boarding school in Longwy (France), after her primary school education in Esch. At such 19^th-century girls’ boarding schools, musical education had a firm place in the curriculum, although the teaching thereof was not supposed to go beyond the ‘female sphere’, meaning that the musical skills they were taught were only aimed at providing entertainment and relaxation. After returning from Longwy, Helen Buchholtz lived in her parental home, where she spent her time playing music and, eventually, trying her hand at composing.

Industrialisation made the number of inhabitants in Esch soar from 2000 in 1870 to 24,000 in 1913, which resulted in a rise and increase in variety of cultural events in Esch. At that time, music-making in private homes was still very popular and important, thus it can be assumed that Helen Buchholtz delighted audiences with her performances on such social occasions at regular intervals.

In 1910, her father died. His son and son-in-law took over the management of the brewery, of which Helen Buchholtz held a quarter of the shares until her death. Her nephew, François Ettinger points out that ‘Helen Buchholtz was a woman of means who could provide for herself and hence, remain independent’. This financial safety net did indeed make the 33-year-old an independent woman overnight and allowed her to take her own decisions regarding her fate, like the decision to make music the centre of her life despite adverse conditions. On 2^nd April 1914, she married the German doctor Bernard Geiger (1954-1921) in Metz and the couple moved to Wiesbaden. Ettinger: ‘Her dream of living in a big mundane city became reality. Wiesbaden, with its internationally renowned thermal baths, was also a cultural hub with its opera, theatre and concert halls – all which Helen Buchholtz had always wished for was now within her grasp. The music lover delved into the artistic and musical atmosphere of the city, which she enjoyed to the utmost.’ Ettinger adds that Buchholtz and her husband had agreed not to have children so that she could devote all her time to composing music.

Shortly after their move to Germany, World War I broke out. Helen Buchholtz used to maintain a steady correspondence with her music-loving brother-in-law but only seven correspondence cards from that period have survived. Surprisingly, however, music and Buchholtz’s musical work and studies rather than the war, everyday life in both Luxembourg and Wiesbaden under the occupation, food shortages and the inflation were the topics raised in these cards. From that correspondence, one can conclude that the musician acquired her skills to a certain extent autodidactically, as she wasn’t one of the very rare women who had gained access to study composition at one of the music conservatoires. She did, however, throughout her life, collaborate with other musicians. One of them was Berlin-born Gustav Kahnt (1848-1923), a retired conductor of the Luxembourg military music band, who taught music composition in Luxembourg-City. When she lived in Wiesbaden, she sent Kahnt her compositions, which he looked over, corrected and suggested improvements for. In general, he qualified her work as ‘very good and worthy of public recognition’. The composer acknowledged a number of Kahnt’s recommendations, but often refused to take on the role of the submissive student and ignored the advice. A final draft of her compositions was drawn up and sent to Luxembourg to print. The Felix Krein publishing house brought out five of her Lieder based on texts by Lucien Koenig. It has to be said that all her compositions were published under her maiden name. Later, the A. Ernst Musikalienhandlung in Wiesbaden published her two Lieder Die rote Blume (The Red Flower) and Die alte Uhr (The Old Clock), as well as an Ave Maria.

Bernard Geiger died unexpectedly in 1921. Helen Buchholtz seems to have processed this loss in her music compositions as a number of her songs deal with death, loss and abandonment. As her work is, however, mostly undated, a link between her biography and her music is purely speculative. After Geiger’s death, Buchholtz returned to Luxembourg and bought a small villa in Limpertsberg, a beautiful area in Luxembourg-City renowned for its fine rose-growing tradition. François Ettinger remembers that, ‘after her return in the 1920s, Buchholtz turned her attention to Luxembourg society, in particular to musicians and poets, like Batty Weber and his wife (the author Emma Weber-Brugmann), Fernand Mertens, etc.’

After Gustav Kahnt’s death in 1923, Helen Buchholtz continues her studies briefly with Jean-Pierre Beicht (1869-1925), who worked in Luxembourg as an organist, a music and song teacher, a choir conductor and composer. Beicht dies in 1925 and, as a result, she starts working with Fernand Mertens (1872-1957), a successful Luxembourg composer of Belgian origin. At the time, Mertens was the conductor of the Luxembourg military music band and taught solfeggio, theory of harmony and counterpoint. Although she spent the thirty remaining years of her life in Luxembourg, she only published six more compositions during that time: two Luxembourg Lieder after texts by Willy Goergen, the Lied Do’deg Dierfer as well as three male-voice choruses in German.

Helen Buchholtz died on 22^nd October 1953, shortly before her 76^th birthday, completely unrecognized as a composer. After her death, her nephew François Ettinger saved her music scores – which had already been packed into big bags to be burned – from the flames and stored them in two big suitcases in his house, where they were left for a very long time. I was lucky to discover them there in 1998. Nowadays, they are available to the public from the Helen Buchholtz Archive at CID-Fraen an Gender in Luxembourg-City.

Discography

Claude Weber has been playing the piano since he was six years old. After several years of private lessons in piano and organ, he receives a ‘Premier Prix’ in piano at the Music Conservatoire of the City of Luxembourg in the class of Marco Kraus. He then studies with Stan Ford at the University of Music and Performing Arts (Mozarteum) in Salzburg and graduates with honours.
He performs in numerous concerts as a soloist, an accompanist and in chamber music. A special preference is given to unusual chamber music formations and little played repertoire. The effort to share the clarity of musical thought with fellow musicians as well as with the audience is always the focus of his playing.
This CD marks the culmination of a long musical exploration of the considered lost Lieder of the Luxembourg composer Helen Buchholtz. Since the year 2000, Claude Weber, together with other musicians, musicologists and music educators, has been gradually presenting Buchholtz’ complete works for solo voice and piano in numerous concerts and on a first CD recording in 2003.

Discography

Gerlinde Sämann was born in Nurenberg, Germany. She studied piano and singing at the Munich Richard-Strauss-Conservatory of Music and had professional training as a respiratory therapist after Ilse Middendorf’s method. Her repertoire ranges from historic works, oratorio and song to avant-garde and contemporary music theatre.
Since 1991, the blind soprano has been performing as a solo artist together with a variety of ensembles:
Balthasar-Neumann-Chor, Dresdner Kammerchor, Dresdner Kreuzchor, Rias Kammerchor, Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Mädchenchor Hannover, Choeur de Chambre Accentus, Arsys Bourgogne, Estampie, Vocame, Armonico Tributo Austria, Himmlische Cantorey, l’Arpeggiata, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, La Petite Bande, Sette Voci, Cantus Cölln, Nederlandse Bachvereniging, Gesualdoconsort Amsterdam, etc.
Gerlinde Sämann has performed in many festivals: Styriarte, La Folle Journée de Nantes, Festa da Musica Lissabon, Rencontres Musicales de Vézelay (Bourgogne), Festival Oude Muziek Utrecht, Festival van Vlaanderen Gent, etc.
In recent years, the artist has been working together among others with: Joshua Rifkin, Hans-Christoph Rademann, Howard Arman, Ton Koopman, Pablo Heras Casado und Sigiswald Kujken.
She has also performed on stage with various opera producers and producers of contemporary music theatre: Arila Siegert, Gil Mehmert, Thomas Höft, Chrescencia Dünser und Otto Kukla.
With great intensity, Gerlinde Sämann creates extraordinary song and duo programs, for example together with the renowned fortepiano artist Ronald Brautigam.
The artist stands out for her flexible and sensuous musicality as well as interpretation, guiding her audience to an exceptional experience of filigree sound nuances.
Numerous radio and CD recordings have been broadcast and released in Germany and abroad.

Discography

Albena Petrovic Vratchanska is a Luxembourgish composer of Bulgarian origin and a Knight of The Order of Merit of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg – L’Ordre de Mérite du Grand-Duché de Luxembourg (2013). She is honored also with the Médaille de Mérite en Argent de l’Union Grand Duc Adolphe (2017), Médaille en Argent de l’Union Saint Pie X (2018) and the «Cultural Award 2007» from the municipality of Hesperange. In 2007 she was a jury member of the International Composition Competition „Valentino Bucchi“ in Rome, Italy.
Born in Sofia, Albena Petrovic got her Master in composition and music writing and her final diploma as a concert pianist in Bulgaria. Since 1996 she lives in Luxembourg. She has written more than 600 works in various music genres. Some of her works are published by SCHOTT MUSIC International, Luxembourg Music Publishers, Editions L’Octanphare, Furore Verlag and her pedagogical work is published by her own edition.
Her catalogue includes «Gladius» for electric guitar and instrumental ensemble, the instrumental theatre «Le Retour des Papillons» («The Return of the butterflies»), two chamber operas The LOVERS and JEALOUSY, two opera-monodramas THE DARK and «Ermesinde’s Long Walk», two pocket operas «La Locandiera» and «The Door of Never», the orchestral pieces «Just a While» and «Mélusine–l‘image mystique», a Concerto for Tuba and orchestra, a Double concerto for Bariton Saxophone, piano and orchestra, and the instrumental opera «Blaues Labyrinth».
Many of her compositions are performed also outside Luxembourg – in Germany, Italy, France, Belgium, Bulgaria, Poland, Greece, USA, Singapore, Russia, Spain, Andorra, Brazil, Slovakia, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Kosovo, Switzerland, Denmark, Serbia, Austria, Australia, Portugal, Croatia.

www.albena-petrovic-vratchanska.com

Discography