Sonja Leutwyler: mezzo soprano

Sonja Leutwyler was born in Zurich. She studied viola and singing at the Zurich College of the Arts and the Munich College of Music and Drama with Maria de Francesca-Cavazza, Christian Gerhaher and Helmut Deutsch. While still studying, she sang roles including Sesto, Larina and Dorabella at such venues as the Prinzregententheater of Munich.

She was engaged as a soloist for four years at the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz in Munich, where she sang major roles for her voice type. Further engagements have taken her to the Margravial Opera House of Bayreuth, the Cuvilliés Theatre in Munich, the TeatroComunale di Bologna and the Zurich Opera House. She recently sang a lead role in the opera Kein Licht (no light) by Philippe Manoury staged by l’Opéra-Comique in Paris and has made guest appearances at the National Theatre of Zagreb and the Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg.

As a concert soloist, Sonja Leutwyler performs with renowned orchestras including the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, the Munich Radio Orchestra under Ulf Schirmer, the Arctic Philharmonic Orchestra, the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra and the SWR Symphony Orchestra under Helmuth Rilling. She is a popular guest at major festivals including the Richard Strauss Festival of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, the Festival of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, the Beethoven Festival of Bonn, the Stuttgart Music Festival and the St Martin-in-the-Fields concert series in London. She also regularly appears at the Zurich Tonhalle and the Vienna Konzerthaus.

Being a versatile singer, Sonja Leutwyler is much sought after for her performances of contemporary works. At the Prinzregententheater in Munich, she portrayed a lead role in Elliott Carter’s opera What Next?with the Munich Radio Orchestra. She appeared as the soloist in the opening concert of the “Wien Modern” series with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and she performed works by Luigi Nono on a tour of Italy under the baton of Roberto Abbado. She recently enjoyed great success in performances of Berio’s Folk Songs in numerous Swiss concert halls.

Highlights of the last three years include Mendelssohn’s Walpurgis Night at the Rheingau Music Festival with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestraunder Andrés Orozco-Estrada, concerts and CD recordings with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra at the Vienna Konzerthaus, a solo recital of arias by Haydn and Vivaldi with Camerata Zurich at the Zurich Tonhalle, CPE Bach’s Magnificat with the Zurich Chamber Orchestra under the baton of Diego Fasolis and a song recital at Tonhalle Maag in Zurich.

www.sonjaleutwyler.com

Astrid Leutwyler: violin

Astrid Leutwyler is an artist of our times: an inspirational, charismatic violinist, competent orchestral player and chamber musician. Her musical interests are very wide-ranging.
From 2007 till 2011, she was deputy leader and a section leader of the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra and, on several occasions in 2011, she led the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra. From 2009 till 2014, Astrid Leutwyler played first violin in Orchestra Mozart Bologna under the baton of Claudio Abbado. For the 2014/15 season, she was appointed deputy section leader in Düsseldorf and played in the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra and the Deutsche Oper am Rhein. Further invitations have led her to the Munich Chamber Orchestra, Mahler Chamber Orchestra and Lucerne Festival Orchestra.
Nowadays, Astrid Leutwyler regularly plays in the Tonhalle Orchestra of Zurich, the Zurich Chamber Orchestra and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra of Munich.
She won the coveted Küsnacht Arts Prize in 2009 and was a prizewinner in the ORPHEUS Swiss Chamber Music Competition and the Schwerin International Competition of Ostracised Music.
As a chamber musician she has performed in Switzerland and abroad at such venues as the Zurich Tonhalle, the Lucerne Culture and Convention Centre (KKL), the MarianischerSaal in Lucerne, Kultur Casino Bern and St Martin-in-the-Fields in London. Astrid Leutwyler has appeared as a guest at major festivals including the Lucerne Festival, the Salzburg Festival, Settimana Musicale in Siena, Bolzano Festival Bozen, the Max Reger Festival in Weiden and the Aigues-VivesenMusiques festival in southern France.
Astrid Leutwyler has made live concert recordings for German and Swiss radio stations. She also appeared as a violinist in Amos Gitaï’s film Lullaby to my Father.
Born in Zurich in 1984, she completed her Master of Arts in Performance and Music Pedagogy and her advanced studies in Stuttgart, Zurich and London with Hanna Weinmeister, Judith Ingolfsson, Andreas Janke and David Takeno. She has received valuable inspiration from Rachel Podger and Giuliano Carmignola. She has also studied with the Belcea Quartet and the Vogler Quartet.
Astrid Leutwyler is enthusiastically involved in the promotion of the arts and founded the Orchestra of Europe in 2011. She has successfully directed her own series of concerts, titled Klassikfestival Küsnacht, since 2017.

www.astridleutwyler.com

Discography

Ausdruckskraft und Technik: Die Verbindung dieser beiden musikalischen Qualitäten zeichnet die Kompositionen Franz Liszts aus – und ist auch für die ungarisch-schweizerische Pianistin Andrea Kauten von ganz besonderer Bedeutung. Die Klaviermusik des ungarischen Virtuosen hat ihr Spiel nachhaltig geprägt.
Andrea Kauten begann ihr Klavierspiel mit sieben Jahren bei dem Basler Pianisten Albert Engel. Bereits als 13-Jährige stand sie im Finale des Jecklin Musiktreffens in Zürich. Ein Jahr später wurde sie mit dem ersten Preis des Schweizerischen Jugendmusikwettbewerbs ausgezeichnet. In der Folge studierte Kauten an der Musik Akademie Basel und schließlich – eine der wichtigsten Stationen in ihrem Leben – an der international renommierten Franz-Liszt-Musikakademie Budapest, wo sie mit Kornél Zempléni und Edith Hambalkó arbeitete. An dem Budapester Ausbildungsort vieler weltbekannter Künstler wie András Schiff, Jenö Jandó oder Ferenc Fricsay verfeinerte sie ihre hochromantische und doch kontrollierte Spielweise.
Mit Leidenschaft, Musikalität und hohem technischen Anspruch entlockt Kauten einem Konzertflügel verhaltene, poetische, aber auch sehr ausdrucksstarke Klänge. Immer wieder überrascht sie so ihre Zuhörer: „Flushed and at times over-assertive, Kauten leaves you in no doubt of her commitment and intensity“, so Bruce Morrison in Gramophone.

1993 erschien Andrea Kautens erste CD mit Werken von Franz Liszt, Carl Goldmark und Sergei Rachmaninow. Seither konzertierte sie in diversen Ländern, wie den USA, Kanada, Dänemark, Frankreich und Deutschland. Bei Sony Classical veröffentlichte die Pianistin 2006 Robert Schumanns C-Dur-Fantasie op. 17, Kreisleriana op. 16 und die Romanzen op. 28, Nr. 2 und 3. Im Liszt-Jahr 2011 erweiterte sie ihre umfangreichen Einspielungen für Sony Classical mit Liszts beiden großen Klaviersonaten: der h-Moll-Sonate von 1835, der Dante-Sonate von 1849 sowie zwei weiteren Werken der Années de Pèlerinage.

Neben ihrer Konzerttätigkeit ist Andrea Kauten künstlerische Leiterin der Kammermusikreihe der Anneliese-Benner-Krafft-Stiftung in Schopfheim-Fahrnau (Südschwarzwald).

Diskographie

Born in Zurich in 1949, Daniel Fueter studied the piano at the Zurich College of Music. He has written around a hundred works of incidental music to plays in the German-speaking world; in addition, he has notably written songs, chansons, choral works, pieces for music theatre and occasionally piano and chamber music. He teaches song interpretation at the Zurich College of the Arts and at the Conservatorio della Svizzera italiana in Lugano. He continues to give lectures on chansons at the Karlsruhe College of Music in his retirement. He held various administrative positions, including those of president of the Swiss Composers’ Association, president of the Swiss arts promotion organisation Suisseculture and rector of the Zurich College of Music and Drama. He has received national and international accolades. He has two daughters, the actress Mona Petri and the singer Rea Claudia Kost, and has two granddaughters and a grandson. He is married to the pianist Eriko Kagawa.

Discographie

Rea Claudia Kost was born in Zurich in 1979. She studied singing with Maarten Koningsberger and Margreet Honig at the Amsterdam Conservatory, from which she graduated with distinction. She subsequently attended De Nieuwe Opera Academie and master classes in Amsterdam and The Hague in addition to training as a yoga teacher at the Yoga and Vedanta Foundation in Utrecht. She won a study scholarship from the Swiss arts promotion scheme Migros-Kulturprozent in 2006. She has appeared as a guest at various operatic societies and festivals in the Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland, including Opera Trionfo, De Nationale Reisopera, the Gergiev Festival in Rotterdam, the Grachtenfestival in Amsterdam, the Zurich Festival and the Davos Festival for young artists.
She has played various staple roles for mezzo-soprano, including Purcell’s Dido, Gluck’s Orfeo and Mozart’s Cherubino, as well as roles in contemporary operas, including Wife in Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Greek and Sugar in Daniel Fueter’s Forelle Stanley. Since 2010, she has performed various programmes of chansons and projects combining music and literature at small venues in and around Zurich. She appeared as a guest singer at the Zurich Schauspielhaus in productions of Le bourgeois gentilhomme in 2013 and Die Zehn Gebote (the ten commandments) in 2015/16. She lives in Zurich with her two children and husband, the baritone Niklaus Kost, and works as a freelance singer and teacher of singing and yoga.

Discography

Galina Vracheva zeichnet sich in der weltweiten Pianistenszene nicht nur mit improvisierten Kadenzen in Klavierkonzerten vom Barock bis zur Moderne, sondern auch mit Spontankompositionen zu aus dem Publikum geäußerten Wünschen aus. Ihre Lehrtätigkeit ist gleichermaßen einzigartig, angefangen mit Klavier- und Kompositionsunterricht in München, Kiew und Berlin und seit mehr als zehn Jahren mit Meisterklassen in Konzertimprovisation am Conservatorium van Amsterdam, im Haus Marteau in Oberbayern, an der Mahidol University in Bangkok and am Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana.

Seit über zwanzig Jahren in Zürich zu Hause, stammt Galina Vracheva aus Plovdiv in Bulgarien, wo sie kürzlich ein Jugendorchester gründete, dessen Name‚ „Frank Martin Players“ die Verbindung mit der Schweiz symbolisiert, sowie ihr Trimontiada Festival zum nationalen Musikereignis aufbaute. Mit ihrem enormen Repertoire tritt sie sowohl als Solistin als auch als Kammermusikerin, wie auch zusammen mit renommierten Orchestern und Dirigenten auf. Sie war zu Gast im Fernsehen, so bei ARD, ZDF und BRF in Deutschland, und immer wieder bei zahlreichen europäischen Radiostationen wie BR Klassik, SRF2 Kultur und Oe1. Vracheva hat Klaviermusik, Suiten für Flöte und für Tuba und zwei Opern komponiert.

Diskographie

Markus Lehmann-Horn was born in 1977 in Munich, Germany. From 1984 he took piano lessons, in addition to guitar lessons, but initially specialized in guitar and electric guitar. After graduation in 1996 Lehmann-Horn worked as a freelance guitarist, played numerous studio recordings and concerts with various ensembles and as a guest musician and wrote his first compositions. From 2003 he studied composition for film and television at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Munich, from 2007 he began the master class in composition with Heinz Winbeck in Würzburg, which he completed successfully.

Lehmann-Horn’s compositions have already been awarded several times: in 2009 he got u.a. the Gerhard Schedl Music Theater Prize of the “Neue Oper Wien”, 2010 the Berlin Opera Prize, 2011 the prestigious Paul Hindemith Prize. Lehmann-Horn was a scholarship holder of the Free State of Bavaria in 2015 at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, as well as a 2016 winner of the 6th Brandenburg Biennale.

As a border crosser between the classical and the techno-electronic music world, he wrote numerous film music compositions for national and international film productions and was, among others, awarded the Franz Grothe Prize in 2009. He has received multiple nominations and a Best Film Score award at the annual international “Jerry Goldsmith Award” in Spain, as well as a nomination for the International Emmy in 2012.

In 2012, the extremely successful premiere of the opera “Woyzeck 2.0” with the “Neue Oper Wien” took place at the Vienna Chamber Opera. In December 2013, the new choral work “Sonat Vox Laetitiae” premiered with the Windsbacher Knabenchor, in February 2014 the award-winning drumming concert “Rot …” with the NDR Radiophilharmonie premiered in Hanover with great success. In March 2016, Lehmann-Horn’s first symphony “Verloren in Wien” (Lost in Vienna) premiered during the 6th Brandenburg Biennale under the direction of Peter Gülke.

Lehmann-Horn’s music is played by renowned orchestras, conductors and ensembles, including the Ensemble Triolog, Minguet Quartet, BR Rundfunkorchester, the NDR Radiophilharmonie or the Schleswig Holstein Festival Orchestra.

Markus Lehmann-Horn lives with his family in Starnberg near Munich.

www.markuslehmannhorn.de

Discography

Isabel Gehweiler (b. 1988) is a highly versatile young German cellist and also
works as a composer. She has won numerous awards including the European
bursary for young artists in the Plenary Hall of the European Parliament at 19
years of age.
She studied with Katharina Gohl-Moser, Ivan Monighetti (Basel College of Music,
Precollege course), Gustav Rivinius (Saarbrücken College of Music, orchestral
diploma), Richard Aaron (Juilliard School of Music, bachelor’s course) and Thomas
Grossenbacher (Zurich College of the Arts, soloist exam and teaching diploma).
As a soloist and chamber musician she has already performed at numerous
festivals including the Bayreuth Festival, the Kronberg Cello Festival, the Lucerne
Festival, the Festival of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, the Focus! Festival in New
York and the Verbier Festival.
She regularly performs as a soloist with orchestras and has appeared in such
concert halls as Carnegie Hall, New York, and Suntory Hall, Tokyo.
Isabel Gehweiler has won awards in national and international competitions,
including the Charles Hennen International Chamber Music Competition (2002)
and the Kiwanis Music Competition (2015, 2016). She has received scholarships
from such institutions as the Notenstein La Roche Academy, the German Academic
Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Rotary International Foundation.
She currently teaches the cello at the Hanover College of Music, Drama and
Media.

Discography

The horn player Mischa Greull is a versatile chamber musician, soloist, and teacher. In addition to his work as solo horn player in the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, he plays in a variety of capacities within various ensembles. CD recordings and performances for the radio with horn quartet, wind quintet, horn trio and larger ensembles are just as much a part of his career as regular concerts with friends from the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, or with the Huh Trio in South Korea. Concert tours and teaching activities take him to Asia, North and South America, and all around Europe. Alongside his concert activities, Mischa Greull is a professor at the Zurich University of the Arts and he also organises his own concert series in the city.

More information can be found at www.greull.ch