Piano Trio with W. Schröder, V. Radutiu & F. Uhlig

The Pharos Arts Foundation presents a concert with violinist Wolfgang Schröder, cellist Valentin Radutiu, and pianist Florian Uhlig. The three artists – all born in Germany but living in different European countries – will meet in concert for the first time in Cyprus to deliver a programme of piano trios by Beethoven, Brahms and Dvořák. The concert which will take place on Wednesday 16 November 2016 at The Shoe Factory, Nicosia, is kindly supported by the Electricity Authority of Cyprus.

PROGRAMME:

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)
Trio for violin, cello & piano No.4 in B-flat major, Op.11 "Gassenhauer" (1798)

JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833-1897)
Trio for violin, cello & piano in C minor, Op.101 (1886)

Interval

ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK (1841-1904)
Trio for violin, cello & piano, No.2 in G minor, Op.26 (1876)

WOLFGANG SCHRÖDER violin

“…wonderfully elevated quality of Wolfgang Schröder’s violin…”
The Strad

At the early age of 17, Wolfgang Schröder won the first prize at the German state competition Jugend musiziert (Youth makes Music) and subsequently a scholarship at the International Menuhin Music Academy (IMMA). He has performed together with Yehudi Menuhin and Alberto Lysy, both as a soloist and a chamber musician, all over the world, including the Barbican Center in London and Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires. After graduating from IMMA, he continued his studies at the Mozarteum University of Music in Salzburg under Prof. Sandor Vegh, and thereafter at the Mannes School of Music in New York under Prof. Aaron Rosand.

Wolfgang Schröder has appeared as a soloist with numerous orchestras, including, the Bavarian Chamber Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, Stuttgart Philharmonic Orchestra, Czech Symphony Orchestra, Basel Chamber Orchestra, Salzburg Chamber Philharmonic and Camerata Salzburg, Nuremberg Symphony, Cairo Symphony Orchestra. He was also the Artistic Director of the European Community Chamber Orchestra (ECCO) from 1993-1995 and has performed a number of highly acclaimed concert tours worldwide. He has collaborated with conductors like Vladimir Ashkenazy, Andrey Boreko, Daniel Raiskin, Simon Gaudenz, to name but a few.

As an active chamber musician, he founded, in 1992, the Belcanto String Trio and from 1996 to 2005, he regularly performed as the violinist of the Trio Parnassus, which – in 2001 – received the prestigious Echo Classic Award for their recording of the complete Schumann piano trios. As a soloist and chamber musician Wolfgang Schröder has appeared in venues such as the Philharmonie in Berlin, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the Vienna Konzerthaus, Lincoln Center in New York, the Frick Collection Museum in New York, the Wigmore Hall and the Barbican Hall in London, Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, and the Athens Megaron.

Schröder’s chamber music partners include artists like Wenzel Fuchs, Charles Neidich, Vladimir Mendelssohn, Benjamin Schmid and Alex Karr, amongst others. He also has been regularly invited to major chamber music festivals such as the Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival in Finland, the Open Chamber Musicians Seminar at Prussia Cove, the Hopfgarten Festival in Austria, the Moritzburg Festival in Germany, the West Cork Festival in Ireland, the Umea and Bostad Festivals in Sweden, and the Ojika Festival in Japan.

Wolfgang Schröder has made recordings for MDG, Divox, Ars Production, Thorofon, Symicon and CPO labels. Since 1998 he has been Artistic Director of the Camerata Stuttgart, and since 2005, the First Concertmaster of the Cyprus Symphony Orchestra. He plays on a violin by Jean Baptist Vuillaume from 1857.

VALENTIN RADUTIU cello

Praised for his “glowing, distinctive and exciting masculine tone” and described as “one of the great cello talents of our time” (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 2013), cellist Valentin Radutiu was born in Munich in 1986. He received his first cello lessons from his father at the age of six, and he subsequently studied in Salzburg, Vienna and Berlin with Clemens Hagen, Heinrich Schiff and David Geringas.

Valentin Radutiu is a prize winner in many competitions. He was distinguished several times at the Jugend musiziert (Youth makes Music) competition and the Dotzauer Competition in Dresden, and he won the First Prize at the International Karl Davidov Competition in Riga. In 2011, he was honored with the Music Prize of German Business, one of the most important prizes for up-and-coming young musicians in Germany. In 2012, Valentin Radutiu won the Second Prize at the International Enescu Competition in Bucharest.

Between 2012 and 2015, Radutiu was promoted by the stART programme of Bayer Kultur, the mission of which is to support young musicians for an intensive three-year period, through regular concert appearances and by sponsoring specific artistic ideas and projects.

Valentin Radutiu has appeared as a soloist with the German Symphony Orchestra Berlin, the German Radio Philharmonic Orchestra Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern, the MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra SWR, the Munich Chamber Orchestra, Camerata Salzburg, the Enescu Philharmonic Orchestra and the Radio Symphony Orchestra in Bucharest, Hong Kong Sinfonietta, Prague Philharmonia, and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra. He has appeared in such venues as the Philharmonie and the Konzerthaus in Berlin, Munich's Prinzregententheater and Philharmonie, the Philharmonic Hall in Riga, Konserthuset Stockholm, Bucharest Atheneum, Hong Kong City Hall, as well as numerous Festivals, including the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, Heidelberger Frühling, Cellobiennale Amsterdam, and Honk Kong Arts Festival.

His chamber music partners include the Hagen Quartet, Ib Hausmann, Evgeni Bozhanov, Diana
Ketler, Igor Ozim, and the Schumann Quartet.

Radutiu’s debut CD, released in 2011, included French works by Lalo, Ravel and Magnard. In 2014, he released the Complete works for cello and piano by George Enescu – an album which was praised by critics as a “benchmark recording” (Haenssler Classic). Radutiu’s intensive collaboration with the composer and conductor Peter Ruzicka is documented in his recording (and first world release) of Ruzicka's cello concerto and cello chamber music. In 2015, Radutiu released Remembering the rain with pianist Benjamin Schaefer, and more recently, he released a CD with cello concertos by Haydn, CPE Bach and Mozart with the Munich Chamber Orchestra. A recital album with Evgeni Bozhanov in works by Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky will be released soon. Valentin Radutiu plays a cello made by Francesco Ruggieri (Cremona, 1685).

FLORIAN UHLIG piano

“Florian Uhlig plays in masterly fashion. His interpretations bear comparison with the very best. This astonishingly original CD is a real event.” (Süddeutsche Zeitung). That was the assessment published by the doyen of music critics, Joachim Kaiser, of Florian Uhlig’s recording of Beethoven’s piano variations released on the Hänssler CLASSIC label in 2009. Since then, Uhlig has recorded some 15 other releases on the same label, all of them marked with high critical acclaim. Florian was awarded the German Record Critics’ Prize for his recording of the complete works for piano and orchestra of Robert Schumann and Dmitri Shostakovich, his recording of piano concertos by Ravel, Poulenc, Françaix, Debussy and Penderecki, and his recording of Ravel’s and Schumann’s complete works for solo piano. Fifteen CDs are scheduled for the Schumann cycle, nine of which have already been released.

Florian Uhlig was born in Düsseldorf and gave his first piano recital at the age of twelve. He studied in London at the Royal College of Music and the Royal Academy of Music, graduating with a Concert Diploma. He was also influenced, by working with Peter Feuchtwanger and by his research towards a PhD thesis at the University of London, on the role of the performer in the context of musical genre.

Florian Uhlig made his orchestral debut at the Barbican in London in 1997. Since then he has appeared at leading concert halls across the world, performing with orchestras like the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Beijing Symphony Orchestra, the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, the Dresden Philharmonic, the Hong Kong Sinfonietta, the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela, the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan, the Bavarian Radio Chamber Orchestra, the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra and the Vienna Chamber Orchestra. He has worked with conductors such as Krzysztof Penderecki, Josep Caballé, Claus Peter Flor, Eivind Gullberg Jensen, Kristjan Järvi, Michael Sanderling and Gerard Schwarz.

He has performed at the Beethoven Festivals of Bonn and Warsaw, Lorin Maazel’s Castleton Festival, the Menuhin Festival in Gstaad, the Hong Kong Arts Festival, France Musique Paris, the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, amongst others.

In addition to his solo activities Florian Uhlig is much in demand as a chamber musician and lieder pianist. He was the last partner of the legendary baritone Hermann Prey. In 2009, Florian founded the Johannesburg International Mozart Festival in South Africa in which he acts as the Artistic Director.

In 2014, Florian Uhlig was appointed Professor of Piano at the Musikhochschule Carl Maria von Weber in Dresden, and in 2015, he was accorded Associateship of the Royal Academy of Music in London. He holds master classes in Germany, Great Britain, Canada, Hong Kong, South Korea, China and Switzerland.

Tickets:
€15 / €10 Concessions & members of the Pharos Arts Foundation,
Box Office: Directly from the Foundation’s website www.pharosartsfoundation.org/Tickets_online.htm or Tel. 9666-9003 (Monday - Friday 10:00am-3:00pm)