Véronique Nosbaum is a very special personality in Luxembourg vocal scenery. She is one of those naturally involved in many kind of art creation – contemporary art , theatre, literature, singing. A graduate in Modern French Literature from the Sorbonne, the Luxembourg soprano studied singing with Greta de Reyghere in Liège before taking classes with Monique Zanetti, Mireille Kayser and Hubert Weller, as well as masterclasses with Sylvia Geszty, Klesie Kelly and Norman Shetler. After a scholarship at the Pisa Opera House she assumed solo roles in operas of Gluck, Mozart and Purcell in Pisa, Lucca and Liège, and in contemporary productions at the Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg, where she is a regular collaborator. Véronique Nosbaum, whose repertoire focuses on ancient and contemporary music, performs at festivals and in concert halls throughout Europe. A skilled singer-actress, she is also frequently asked to work with theatre companies.

Romain Nosbaum is an individualist among the pianists of his generation. Without airs and graces, but with modesty and passionate devotion, he is solely focused on music. Both the grand gesture and sheer brilliancy are not his main focus – instead, his playing stands out through intelligence, subtle individuality and technical perfection.
A universal interest in ‘tradition and innovation’ expresses itself not only soloistically, but also through his activities as a passionate chamber musician. Thus, he regularly performs as a accompanist with vocal artists such as his sister Véronique.
Musicality was literally put into the cradle of Swiss-born Nosbaum. His grandmother, who was also a pianist, met artists such as Alfred Cortot or Clara Haskil and performed under the direction of Felix Weingartner. Nosbaum started to play the piano at the age of 7 and completed his studies at the conservatories of the City of Luxembourg and Metz. Advanced studies led him to the City of Basel Music Academy, the conservatory of Bern, and to the Mozarteum University of Salzburg.
In recitals, as a soloist as well as a chamber musician, Nosbaum’s concerts have led him throughout Europe and Russia to East Asia. His solo recordings have received critical acclaim and were especially praised for both the personal interpretation of the romantic repertoire and his sense for contemporary music and the varied shaping of it. After two self-published solo albums (2010/2014), he recorded the integral piano works of the composer Albena Petrovic for the label GEGA new in 2016. In 2017 he released his solo CD Encores under the label ARS Production.

Discography

Hailed as “brilliant” by Fanfare Magazine, multi-award winning pianist-composer Zhen Chen has performed as a soloist and chamber music artist at prominent music venues in USA and China, such as Stern Auditorium, Weill Recital Hall of Carnegie Hall, David Geffen Hall of Lincoln Center, Preston Bradley Hall of the Chicago Cultural Center, and China National Centre for Performing Arts. His live performances and recordings have been broadcasted by Chicago WFMT 98.7, Princeton WPRB 103.3 WCNY Classic FM and China Central Television Music Channel among others.

Mr. Chen has worked with prominent violinists Maxim Vengerov, Cho-Liang Lin, Elmira Darvarova and outstanding instrumentalists of the New York Philharmonic and the Orchestra of Metropolitan Opera in concert and recording engagements. His debut recording FAURÉ, SCHUMANN, BARTÓK Sonatas for Violin and Piano (MSR Classics, 2014) in collaboration with acclaimed violinist Shuai Shi has received plaudits from listeners and critics worldwide. Fanfare Magazine describes the recording as “inexpressibly beautiful” and a “perfect balance” with “sheer beauty of tone, fluent and fluid playing, and emotional refinement.”

Mr. Chen also wears another hat as a performer-composer who bridges Eastern and Western sensibility and musicality. His recent cross-culture and cross-genre composition works were crystalized in the albums ERGO: New Music for Piano and Chinese Folk Instruments (Navona/Naxos, 2017) and On & Between: New Music for Pipa and Western Ensembles (Navona/Naxos, 2018). The latter won the Gold Medal of Global Music Awards for Best Album and Best Instrumentalists.

Mr. Chen received a bachelor’s degree in piano performance from Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and a master’s degree in piano performance under Dr. Arkady Aronov at Manhattan School of Music in New York City, where he also earned a master’s degree in collaborative piano and chamber music with Heasook Rhee.

Discography

GRAMMY®-nominated, award-winning (Gold Medal at the Global Music Awards in 2017 and 2018) and a concert violinist since the age of four, Elmira Darvarova caused a sensation, becoming the first ever (and so far only) woman-concertmaster in the history of the Metropolitan Opera in New York. With the MET Orchestra she toured Europe, Japan and the United States, and was heard on the MET’s live weekly international radio broadcasts, television broadcasts and CDs for Sony, Deutsche Gramophone and EMI. As MET concertmaster she has performed with the greatest conductors of our time, including the legendary Carlos Kleiber. She studied with Yfrah Neaman, Josef Gingold and Henryk Szeryng.

She can be heard on numerous CDs (including the world premiere of Vernon Duke’s violin concerto with the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony, and a CD with music by René de Castéra, named a RECORD OF THE YEAR in 2015 by MusicWeb International). She has appeared on the stages of five continents and has performed concertos with numerous European and American orchestras. She has given master classes worldwide and has performed and recorded chamber music with Janos Starker, Gary Karr, Pascal Rogé, Vassily Lobanov, and Fernando Otero. A documentary film about her was shown on European television. She performs with the New York Piano Quartet, the Delphinium Trio, the Quinteto del Fuego and the Amram Ensemble, and is Jury President of several international chamber music competitions in Europe. She is Director of the New York Chamber Music Festival.

Praised by The Strad for her “intoxicating tonal beauty and beguilingly sensuous phrasing” and “silky-smooth voluptuous tone”, she was featured in a Gramophone Magazine article about her world-premiere recording of Vernon Duke’s concerto (written for Heifetz in 1940).

Discography

“Mikhail Pochekin’s violin is broadly, brilliantly sonorous in the medium to loud dynamic range and balanced in all registers…with a virtuoso technique, disclosing all the tone colors of its diverse palette, but also with excellent musical expression…” (El Comercio, Spain)

Mikhail Pochekin is one of the most captivating violinists of his generation. He appears with many renowned orchestras including the Mariinsky Theater Symphony, the Russian National Orchestra, the Basel Symphony Orchestra, the Moscow Philharmonic, the State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Russia “Evgeny Svetlanov”, the Tatarstan National Symphony Orchestra or the Lithuanian National Orchestra and worked together with conductors such as Heinz Holliger, Vassily Sinaisky, Yuri Simonov, Kevin Griffiths, Valentin Uryupin, Stanislav Kochanovsky, Dimitris Botinis, Mei-Ann Chen or Alexander Sladkovsky.

His concerts can be experienced in numerous renowned concert venues including the Mariinsky Theater Concert Hall in Saint-Petersburg, the Auditorio Nacional de Música in Madrid, the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall in Moscow, the Great hall of Moscow State Conservatory, the Mozarteum in Salzburg, or the Gasteig in Munich. Also, he is a constant participant of the “Stars of the 21st Century” project organized by the Moscow Philharmonic Society.

Mikhail Pochekin won top prizes at the prestigious international competitions, including the Pablo Sarasate, the Rodolfo Lipizer, the Ruggiero Ricci and the Jascha Heifetz violin competitions. In 2008, he was awarded the Pablo Sarasate National Prize in Spain, following which he gave a concert playing on Antonio Stradivari’s famous “ex-Boissier”, which used to belong to Sarasate.

Mikhail Pochekin was born in 1990 to a family of musicians: his father is a well-known violin maker, and his mother teaches violin. He began studying the violin at the age of five with Galina Turchaninova and continued his studies with such Professors as Ana Chumachenco, Viktor Tretiakov and Rainer Schmidt, at the music academies of Cologne, Munich and Basel, the “Reina Sofia” school of music in Madrid and also at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg. He has taken part in various masterclasses with Gidon Kremer, Christian Tetzlaff and Vadim Repin. His chamber music partners include Wen-Sinn Yang, Manuel Fischer-Dieskau, Kian Soltani, Andrey Baranov, Yuri Favorin, and Alexander Ramm.

Special mention should be made of his duet with his brother, violinist and violist Ivan Pochekin. In 2018, label Melodiya released their debut album entitled “The Unity of Opposites” which received highly enthusiastic critical acclaim:

“Duos for two violins resp. violin and viola from the first Wiener Schule and from Russia are elegantly and tastefully played by the Pochekin brothers.” (Pizzicato, 2018)

“A wonderful recording.“ (klassik.com, 2018)

Discography

Straubing-born Gerold Huber was awarded a scholarship to study piano under Friedemann Berger at the Musikhochschule in Munich. He also attended Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s lied class in Berlin. In 1998 he was awarded the Prix International Pro Musicis in Paris / New York together with baritone Christian Gerhaher, his regular duo partner since their joint schooldays. In 2001 he was a prize-winner at the Johann Sebastian Bach International Piano Competition in Saarbrücken.

“His sensitive interludes are to die for. The pianist uncovers the subtle network of a comedy of errors and succeeds in penetrating the depths of the soul.” This is the sort of enthusiastic press reaction prompted by Gerold Huber’s piano accompaniment. In the role of lied pianist he regularly appears at festivals such as Schubertiade Schwarzenberg, Schwetzingen Festival and Rheingau Music Festival and major venues including Philharmonie Cologne, Alte Oper Frankfurt, Konzerthaus and Musikverein in Vienna, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Wigmore Hall London, Großes Festspielhaus Salzburg, Lincoln center and Armory or Carnegie hall in New York and Musée d’Orsay in Paris.

Being so high in demand as accompanist, Gerold Huber works with a multitude of internationally renowned singers, amongst them Christiane Karg, Christina Landshamer, Ruth Ziesak, Mojca Erdmann, Michael Nagy, Maximilian Schmitt and Franz-Josef Selig. Gerold Huber also performs chamber music with the Artemis Quartet, Henschel Quartet and with Reinhold Friedrich.
The season 2016/2017 was crowned by three performances with Christian Gerhaher of Die schöne Magelone by Brahms in Heidelberg, London and Munich, in which Ulrich Tukur takes the part of the narrator. A related CD was published in spring 2017. On this Martin Walser is the narrator of the texts based on Ludwig Tieck which he has carefully adapted to create an ironic version especially for Christian Gerhaher and Gerold Huber. In 2018, Christian Gerhaher, Gerold Huber and Ulrich Tukur will give further of Brahm’s Die schöne Magelone in Bamberg, Frankfurt and Vienna.

Gerold Huber’s activities as a soloist focus on the works of Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms and Franz Schubert. He has given recitals in Munich, Regensburg, at the Théâtre Municipal des Romains in France, at the Kultursommer Kassel Festival and the New Zealand Festival in Wellington. With actor Hanns Zischler, he appeared in an evening of melodrama at the Vienna Konzerthaus.

Apart from two solo albums with works by Beethoven and Schumann, he is most renowned for his outstanding recordings with baritone Christian Gerhaher which have all received many awards.
His extensive discography also includes Schubert lieder with Bernarda Fink (Schubert for harmonia mundi France), Ruth Ziesak (Liszt for Berlin classics; Haydn and Mahler/Zemlinsky for Capriccio, Mendelssohn for AVI) and recordings with Maximilian Schmitt (Clara and Robert Schumann / Schubert Die schöne Müllerin) and with Christina Landshamer (Robert Schumann and Viktor Ullmann) for Oehms classic as well as with Franz-Josef Selig (songs of Schubert, Strauss and Wolf) for AVI.

Gerold Huber gives master-classes with increasing frequency, most recently at the University of Yale, the Aldeburgh Festival as well as at the Schwetzingen Festival. Since 2013 he has been a professor for lied accompaniment at the Hochschule für Musik in Würzburg. Gerold Huber is artistic director of der Pollinger Tage Alter und Neuer Musik.

Diskographie

The mezzo soprano Constance Heller was born and grew up in the picturesque town of Laufen on Bavaria’s south-eastern border with Austria. She first appeared on stage during her school years, playing lead roles in premieres of mystery plays by Cesar Bresgen, and was thenceforth eager to pursue a singing career. After leaving school, she studied singing at the Mozarteum University of Salzburg, where she attained a Master of Arts with distinction. During her studies, she made her operatic debut in the twin roles of the Muse and Nicklausse in The Tales of Hoffmann at Giessen Municipal Theatre, followed by numerous other operatic and concert performances.

Constance Heller debuted at the Berlin State Opera in the role of Anna Kennedy in Maria Stuarda in 2006 and has performed there in the operas The Magic Flute, Faust, Elektra, The Gambler and Parsifal (with Plácido Domingo in the title role). She appeared in Moses und Aron in Tokyo during the Berlin State Opera’s tour of Japan. Constance Heller also has close ties with the Dresden Semperoper, where she performed in Faust, Elektra and Wagner’s “Ring” cycle. In recent seasons, Constance Heller has sung at venues including Teatro alla Scala in Milan, the Ruhrtriennale arts festival, the Esplanade Concert Hall in Singapore, the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, the Philharmonie im Gasteig in Munich, the Berlin Philharmonie, the Cologne Philharmonie, the Berlin Konzerthaus, the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, the Municipal Theatre of Bern, the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, the Théâtre du Capitole in Toulouse, the Leipzig Opera, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Theater Erfurt and, under a fixed contract, at the Schwerin State Theatre.

Her repertoire encompasses all the main breeches roles of the mezzo category, numerous parts in Richard Wagner’s operas, the roles of Olga, Paulina, Fenena, Ulrica, Amneris, Mignon, Dalila and Klytaemnestra as well as all the major oratorios and concert pieces. She has worked with such conductors as Jonas Alber, Alain Altinoglu, Daniel Barenboim, Michael Boder, Anthony Bramall, Johannes Debus, Asher Fisch, Claus Peter Flor, Daniel Huppert, Leo Hussain, Alexander Joel, Axel Kober, Yuri Lebedev, Kent Nagano, Julien Salemkour, Peter Schneider, Alexander Soddy, Stefan Soltesz, Christian Thielemann, Sebastian Weigle, Simone Young and Lothar Zagrosek in productions by Willy Decker, Peter Dehler, Michiel Dijkema, Dieter Dorn, Bernd Eichinger, August Everding, Barbara Frey, Nicolas Joel, Guy Joosten, Dieter Kaegi, Philipp Kochheim, Nikolaus Lehnhoff, Peter Mussbach, Georg Rootering, Dmitri Tcherniakov, Keith Warner and Karsten Wiegand.
Her discography includes recordings of the operas The Gambler (Unitel/Barenboim), Moses und Aron (EuroArts/Boder) and Elektra (Opus Arte/Thielemann) on DVD as well as Thielemann’s CD Elektra (Deutsche Grammophon).

Besides music theatre, she has performed new and rediscovered works with pianist Gerold Huber in recitals and for CD release. 2016 saw the release of her album Fahrt in die Welt (travelling the world) with songs by Edmund Nick after texts by Erich Kästner.

Discography

Since her student days in New York, Hamburg and Weimar (studying with the likes of Oxana Yablonskaya, Evgeni Koroliov, Dalton Baldwin and Menachem Pressler), the German-Bulgarian pianist Mariana Popova has garnered numerous international competition prizes, such as at the Elise Meyer Piano Competition and the Köster Klassik Chamber Music Competition (Hamburg), the International Johannes Brahms Lieder Competition (Pörtschach), the Concours International de Musique de Chambre (Lyon), the  International Maria Canals Piano Competition (Barcelona) and the Summit Music Festival Piano Competition (New York). In 2018 the Lieder recording she made with soprano Narea Son was awarded the Gold Prize at the 3rd Manhattan International Music Competition.

Mariana Popovaʼs concert schedule has taken her as a Lieder accompanist, chamber musician and soloist to many European countries, to Russia, China and the USA, as well as to international festivals such as the Aarhus Festival for New Music (Denmark), Varna Summer (Bulgaria), Heures Musicales de Biot (France) and the Schwetzingen Music Festival. In a series of Hamburg Lieder recitals initiated by the pianist in 2010 to mark the bicentenary of Robert Schumannʼs birth, she performed the key art songs of Robert and his wife Clara with eight different singing partners. In the summer of 2012 Mariana Popova recorded a CD of Lieder from the Baltic nations, a commission from the German Foreign Office when Germany held the presidency of the Council of the Baltic States.

She enjoys musical partnerships with many artists including Christiane Karg, Hanna Herfurtner, Lini Gong, Judith Thielsen, Lisa Schmalz, Huiling Zhu, Yvi Jänicke, Dominik Köninger, Renate Behle, Geert Smits, Hansung Yoo, Boglárka Pecze, Julius Bekesch, Hannah Weber and Christian Quadflieg. She has made CD recordings and numerous radio and TV recordings in Bulgaria, Germany (NDR, MDR, SWR), and France (Radio France).

Moreover, collaborations with composers such as Peter Ruzicka, Hans Zender, Ernst Ludwig Leitner, Fredrik Schwenk, Elmar Lampson, Johannes Boris Borowski, Ruta Paidere and Khadija Zeynalova document her keen interest in new music.

Mariana Popova has been official accompanist at the singing master classes of Brigitte Fassbaender, Reri Grist, Angela Denoke, Margreet Honig, Christiane Iven and Robert Holl. Since 2007 she has been a lecturer for vocal accompaniment at the College of Music and Drama in Hamburg, where since 2017 she has headed a new training class for “vocal chamber music”. In 2013 Mariana Popova was a guest lecturer for Lieder interpretation at the Conservatoire in Shanghai, China.

Discography

Lini Gong is a soprano of Chinese heritage and a specialist in contemporary music.

She is a versatile singer. Her repertoire includes the great, challenging roles for coloratura soprano: she has for example sung Olympia in Tales of Hoffmann by Jacques Offenbach and Zerbinetta in Richard Strauss’s opera Ariadne auf Naxos at the theatres in Freiburg and Basel. Lini Gongʼs special passion is for modern and contemporary music. The singer has already collaborated with numerous composers – including Elmar Lampson and Krzysztof Penderecki, Wolfgang Rihm and Peter Ruzicka. Reporting on her embodiment of Death in Hector Paaraʼs opera Das geopferte Leben at the Munich Biennale in 2014, the newspaper Die Deutsche Bühne wrote: “Among the singers, who were consistently good, the almost dramatic coloratura soprano Lini Gong stands out in particular; she sings with captivating brilliance and has a phenomenal stage presence.”

Born in Zhuzhou, Hunan (China) in 1981, Lini Gong received  her training at the music boarding school in Wuhan, at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and at the College of Music and Drama in Hamburg. While preparing for her concert examination she took on a permanent engagement at the theatre in Freiburg, where over eight seasons she sang many great roles of the coloratura soprano repertoire. Lini Gong has given acclaimed performances in operas by Mozart, Rossini and Verdi. Critics praise her “glass-clear soprano voice” (Südkurier). The soprano is attested as an “eminent coloratura singer” (Badische Zeitung), and as a “nimble” Mozart singer (Opernwelt). Lini Gong gave her debut at the theatre in Freiburg in György Ligetiʼs opera Le Grand Macabre delivering an “excellent performance” as Police Chief Nekrotzar (Die Welt).

Guest appearances have taken her to the opera houses in Basel, Hamburg, Kiel, Stuttgart and Weimar. Lini Gong has worked with directors such as Calixto Bieito and Vera Nemirova. She also has close ties to conductors such as Peter Rundel, Jonathan Stockhammer and Peter Tilling, Gerhard Markson and Fabrice Bollon. She has performed with numerous orchestras, including Ensemble Resonanz, ensemble recherche and the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra. She was involved in large-scale roles at premieres at the Munich Biennale and the Schwetzingen SWR Festival; these include acclaimed performances in the operas Koma by Georg Friedrich Haas and Wilde by Hector Parra. In 2017 Lini Gong gave her debut in Hamburgʼs Elbphilharmonie in a concertante performance of Arnold Schoenbergʼs opera Moses und Aron together with the NDR Elbphilharmonie orchestra under the baton of Ingo Metzmacher.

Lini Gong has won numerous prizes, including a special prize at the 2001 “Neue Stimmen” singing competition in Gütersloh. She also won second prize at the Concours International de Musique de Chambre in Lyon. In 2007 she was awarded the Berenberg arts prize in Hamburg.

Discography

Der Geiger, Komponist, Violinpädagoge und Herausgeber Henri Marteau (1874-1934) gehört zu den tragischen Gestalten der Musikgeschichte. Er begann seine Karriere als ein u.a. von Brahms, Bruch, Gounod und Massenet ermutigtes und hoch gelobtes Wunderkind, feierte dann in ganz Europa und in den USA auf ausge­dehn­ten Kon­zerttourneen Triumphe. Als Nachfolger des deutschen „Geigen­paps­tes“ Joseph Joachim an der Berliner Musikhochschule seit 1908 war er auch der füh­rende Violinpädagoge im deutschsprachigen Raum. Aber der Sohn eines französi­schen Industriellen und einer deutschen Mutter, der französischer Staatsbürger war, wurde bei Ausbruch des 1. Weltkriegs 1914 als feindlicher Aus­länder verhaftet, mehrmals freigelassen und wieder festgenommen und durfte nach demütigenden Internierungen erst 1917 in seine Villa nach Lichtenberg in Ober­franken zurückkehren. Seine Berliner Stellung wurde ihm in entwürdigender Weise entzogen und auch nach Ende des Krieges nicht wiedergegeben. Weder als Solist noch als Pädagoge konnte er an seine Erfolge vor dem Krieg anknüpfen, schon gar nicht mit Schallplattenaufnahmen, die für ihn zu spät kamen und ihn nicht mehr im Vollbesitz seiner Fähigkeiten zeigen.

Haus Marteau

Discographie

 

Immanuel Richter (1974) received his musical training at the Zurich Conservatory under Claude Rip-pas, where he completed all his diplomas (teaching, orchestra and concert diplomas) with distinction. Already in his youth he won several prizes at various competitions. He attended master classes with Hakan Hardenberger, Pierre Thibaud, Allen Vizzutti and Maurice André, among others. Immanuel Richter has worked as a solo trumpeter in various orchestras (Zurich Opera Orchestra, St. Gallen Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana). For 3 years he was solo trumpeter of the “orchestra dell teatro alla Scala” in Milan, where he played under conductors such as Daniel Barenboim, Lorin Maazel, Georges Prêtre, Daniele Gatti, Riccardo Chailly, Gustavo Dudamel and many others. In summer 2009 he joined the Basel Symphony Orchestra as solo trumpeter. Numerous appearances as soloist and chamber musician. Solo trumpeter in the Gstaad Festival Orchestra (Jaap van Zweden), solo trumpeter in renowned European orchestras (Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome). Since 2008 he has taught trumpet at the Lucerne University of Music.

Discography