"The common thread on this CD is not the music but the playing."
Luister, 17-1-2020Violinist Franziska Hölscher is one of the most versatile young musicians on today’s international music scene. As a soloist, chamber musician, and festival director, she has been invited and often returns to perform at distinguished venues including the Philharmonie and the Konzerthaus in Berlin, the Festspielhaus in Baden-Baden, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, and the Rudolfinum in Prague. She makes appearances at the Ansbach Bach Festival, the Schleswig- Holstein Music Festival, at the Schwetzinger SWR Festspiele, the Kissinger Sommer, the Schubertiade Schwarzenberg, the Rheingau Music Festival, and the Heidelberger Frühling Festival.
Musical collaborations with outstanding colleagues always formed an integral part of her podium repertoire since the onset of her career. She counts Kit Armstrong, Martin Helmchen, Severin von Eckardstein, Nils Mönkemeyer, Maximilian Hornung, and Andreas Ottensamer among her chamber music partners. Hölscher also shared an intensive artistic collaboration with renowned German author Roger Willemsen, with whom she conceived the stage recital entitled Landschaften (Landscapes), featuring interrelations between text and music.
Conceiving her recital programmes from start to finish as a dramatic arc, Hölscher combines Baroque,
Classical and Romantic pieces with the music of our times. At the 2018 Movimentos Festival in Wolfsburg
she performed the world premiere of an early work by Wolfgang Rihm, the Concertino for Violin and Strings.
Born in Heidelberg, Franziska Hölscher was trained as a violinist by Ulf Hoelscher, Thomas Brandis, Nora
Chastain, and Reinhard Goebel. In her youth she had already garnered a series of prizes at international
competitions.
As an ambassador of the Rhapsody in School project initiated by Lars Vogt, Franziska
Hölscher is especially committed to this outreach program offering young people the opportunity
to meet and exchange ideas with concert artists with concert artists. Franziska Hölscher is Artistic
Director of the Klangbrücken chamber music recital series at the Konzerthaus Berlin. In 2018 she
was also named Artistic Director of Mettlach Chamber Music Festival.
www.franziskahoelscher.com
Severin von Eckardstein, one of the leading German pianists of his generation, has delighted the public with many highly acclaimed concerts, e.g. in Berlin, Moscow, Madrid, London, Paris, New York, Amsterdam, Budapest, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Seoul. His talent could be enjoyed at renown music festivals, including Ruhr Piano Festival, La Roque d’Anthéron in France, Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival and the Miami International Piano Festival, where he played the opening concert in 2009.
He has performed with conductors such as Valery Gergiev, Philippe Herreweghe, Lothar Zagrosek and
Marek Janowski, and made important debuts, among others in 2007 (Amsterdam under Paavo Järvi),
Dallas (under Jaap van Zweden), Budaypest (under Zsolt Hamar). During the European lockdown in
November 20 he debuted with Mariinsky Orchestra (under Valery Gergiev) and the Ural Philhamonic
in Yekaterinburg, Russia.
As a frequent guest of the concert series Meesterpianisten at Concertgebouw Amsterdam, he was
reinvited to this extraordinary series for the 8th time in 2020.
Von Eckardstein won prizes at numerous noteworthy international competitions, e.g. Ferruccio Busoni
in Bozen (1998), Leeds International Piano Competition (2000), ARD-Competition in Munich (1999)
and was awarded first prize at the Concours Reine Elisabeth in Brussels (2003).
Musically educated by Prof. Barbara Szczepanska, Prof. Karl-Heinz Kämmerling, Prof. Klaus Hellwig
and at the International Piano Academy Lake Como, he himself has been serving as master class
instructor on many occasions, among others in South Korea, Finland, Belgium and at the UdK, Berlin.
In 2015 he founded the chamber concert series Klangbrücken at Konzerthaus Berlin together with
violinist Franziska Hölscher.
CD recordings with compositions by Medtner, Scriabin, Wagner, Schubert, Schumann, Debussy
and others are highly regarded. His latest album of Dupont´s cycle La maison dans les dunes was
awarded with Diapason d´Or.
The common thread on this CD is not the music but the playing.
Luister, 17-1-2020
Franziska Hölscher moves with great ease through the inhospitable landscape of Sciarrino
De Volkskrant, 30-8-2019