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

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

Der mehrfach ausgezeichnete und vom Fanfare Magazine als „brillant“ gefeierte Pianist und Komponist Zhen Chen trat als Solist und Kammermusiker in prominenten Konzertsälen in den USA und China auf, darunter das Stern Auditorium, die Weill Recital Hall der Carnegie Hall, der David Geffen Hall des Lincoln Center, die Preston Bradley Hall des Chicago Cultural Center und das China National Centre for Performing Arts. Seine Live-Auftritte und Aufnahmen wurden unter anderem von Chicago WFMT 98.7, Princeton WPRB 103.3 und vom China Central Television Music Channel übertragen.

Herr Chen hat mit den angesehenen Geigern Maxim Vengerov, Cho-Liang Lin, Elmira Darvarova sowie herausragenden Künstlern der New Yorker Philharmoniker und des Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in Konzerten und Aufnahmen zusammengearbeitet. Sein Debütalbum FAURÉ, SCHUMANN, BARTÓK Sonatas for Violin and Piano (MSR Classics, 2014), das in Zusammenarbeit mit der renommierten Geigerin Shuai Shi entstand, wurde weltweit von Hörern und Kritikern gefeiert. Das Fanfare Magazine beschreibt die Aufnahme als „unaussprechlich schön“ mit einer „perfekten Balance von der Schönheit des Tones, fließendem und flüssigem Spiel und emotionaler Raffinesse“.

Herr Chen ist darüber hinaus als Komponist aktiv, der in seinen Werken östliche und westliche Sensibilität und Musikalität miteinander verbindet. Seine jüngsten kultur- und genreübergreifenden Kompositionsarbeiten kristallisieren sich in den Einspielungen ERGO: New Music for Piano and Chinese Folk Instruments (Navona/Naxos, 2017) und On & Between: New Music for Pipa and Western Ensembles (Navona/Naxos, 2018). Letzteres wurde bei den Global Music Awards mit der Goldmedaille in der Kategorie Best Album and Best Instrumentalists ausgezeichnet.

Herr Chen absolvierte seinen Bachelor in Klavierspiel am Central Conservatory of Music in Peking und den Master bei Dr. Arkady Aronov an der Manhattan School of Music in New York City, wo er auch den Master-Abschluss bei Heasook Rhee in Klavierbegleitung und Kammermusik erhielt.

Diskografie

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