Artists
The young bass-baritone studied voice with Prof. Karlheinz Hanser and in the Lied class of Prof. Florian Boesch at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. He is a laureate of several international singing competitions; among others, he won the second prize at the 2022 Hugo Wolf International Competition for Lied Art in Stuttgart. As of 2020/21 season, he has been a permanent member of the ensemble at the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz in Munich, where his roles include Speaker in Die Zauberflöte, Masetto and Leporello in Don Giovanni, Don Basilio in Il barbiere di Siviglia or Frank in Die Fledermaus. His concert activities include various recitals, as Beethoven's Ninth Symphony at the Grosses Festspielhaus Salzburg, J.S. Bach's St. John Passion and Handel's Messiah at the Vienna Konzerthaus, or Mendelssohn's Paulus at the Golden Hall of the Vienna Musikverein.
Alexander Schmalcz received his first piano lessons as a chorister in Dresden Kreuzchor; studied at the Conservatory of Dresden and Utrecht and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. He has won numerous awards, including the contest Nederlands Impressariat 1995 (together with his piano trio) the Gerald Moore Award and the award of companion Megan Foster in 1996. He acts regularly in the most important concert halls as the Wigmore Hall in London, the Schubertiade Schwarzenberg, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Royal Opera House in London or the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. He works regularly with singers like Matthias Goerne, Konrad Jarnot or Stephan Loges. His companions of chamber music include the Petersen Quartet and the cellist Keys Reichardt. He is a professor at the Robert Schumann Conservatory in Dusseldorf from 1999.
Amadeus Wiesensee was born in 1993 and debuted at the age of twelve with the Munich Radio Orchestra. In 2019, the Süddeutsche Zeitung described his interpretation of Brahms’s Piano Trio No. 1 as “top-class, poetic and captivating”, while the Münchner Abendzeitung named him the Cultural Star of the Year in the classical music category. Amadeus Wiesensee has performed at the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the Ruhr Piano Festival, the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, the Rheingau Musik Festival and the Würzburg Mozartfest, among other venues. In 2021, he was awarded the Bayerischer Kunstförderpreis. Amadeus Wiesensee was the first resident artist of the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn in the 2021/22 season, and he debuted in the Frauenkirche in Dresden, at the Beethoven Festival in Bonn, at Die Glocke in Bremen and at the Schloss Elmau with the Goldberg Variations.
Born in Jerusalem, he began playing piano at the age of four. Developing an early love for the art song, Ammiel is internationally recognised as a leading song pianist of his generation and performs regularly at notable venues across Europe, North America, Africa, Asia and Australia. After initial studies in South Africa, where he raised, he furthered his studies at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater “Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy” in Leipzig and at the Conservatoire Nationale Supérieur de Musique in Paris. Ammiel is a prize-winner at numerous competitions, including the Wigmore Hall Competition in London or the International Schubert Competition in Stuttgart. One of the last private students of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, he mentors regularly at Thomas Hampson’s Heidelberg Lied Academy. In addition to his activities as a pianist, Ammiel is also active as a musicologist and specializes in research on Schubert and Wagner.
Baritone Andrè Schuen comes from the Ladin area of La Val of South Tyrol in Italy and grew up speaking three languages (Ladin, Italian and German), a versatility reflected in his current vocal repertoire. Although the cello was his chosen instrument for many years, he decided to attend the Mozarteum University in Salzburg, studying with Horiana Branisteanu, and Wolfgang Holzmair. With his Lied partner Daniel Heide, he can be heard worldwide in Lied centres such as London's Wigmore Hall, the Schubertiade, the Schubertiada Vilabertran, the Munich's Prinzregententheater, the Amsterdam's Concertgebouw or the Vienna Konzerthaus. His opera roles include Guglielmo (Così fan tutte), Figaro and Count Almaviva (Les noces de Figaro), Don Giovanni, Eugene Onegin or Wolfram (Tannhäuser). Since 2021, he has been an Exclusive Recording Artist for Deutsche Grammophon. His Schwanengesang (November 2022) earned him the coveted Opus Klassik award.