"SCHUMANISSIMO" - GREAT CHAMBER MUSIC
Works by Clara and Robert Schumann
Violin:: Wolfram Brandl
Cello: Andreas Greger
Piano: Tatjana Blome
Three great musicians, cellist Andreas Greger (principal cellist of the Staatskapelle Berlin), violinist Wolfram Brandl (1st concertmaster of the Staatskapelle Berlin) and pianist Tatjana Blome have come together to celebrate this deeply romantic music by the Schumann couple.
Wolfram Brandl was born in Würzburg in 1975. He received his first violin lessons from his father at the age of eight. At school, he had lessons with Max Speermann in Würzburg. He won several first prizes at the national "Jugend musiziert" competition and was concertmaster of the national youth orchestra. With the support of the Jürgen Ponto Foundation, he went to Berlin to study with Uwe-Martin Haiberg at the University of the Arts after graduating from high school in 1994. Before becoming 1st concertmaster of the Staatskapelle Berlin under Daniel Barenboim in 2011, he was 1st violinist with the Berliner Philharmoniker for ten years. In addition to his work as concertmaster, Wolfram Brandl is 1st violinist of the Scharoun Ensemble Berlin, which was founded in 1983 by members of the Berliner Philharmoniker. They have made guest appearances at Carnegie Hall New York, Wigmore Hall London, the Konzerthaus in Vienna, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam and the Teatroalla Scaladi Milano. His interest in classical and contemporary music has led to encounters with Pierre Boulez, Christoph Penderecki, Heinz Holliger, Thomas Adés, Matthias Pintscher, Brett Dean and Jörg Widmann. Numerous recordings document his work and have been awarded prizes such as the Echo and the International Classical Music Award 2012. He also plays in the Staatskapelle Berlin String Quartet, which was founded in 2018 on the initiative of Daniel Barenboim and represents the orchestra as a chamber music ensemble.
Andreas Greger has been principal cellist of the Staatskapelle Berlin since 1986. He studied with Joseph Schwab at the Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin. Additional studies at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest completed his artistic training. His mentors included György Kurtág, Laszlo Mezö and Miklos Perenyi. He has won prizes at national and international competitions, such as the 1986 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. He has appeared several times as a soloist on radio recordings and in concerts at home and abroad. He has performed with the Staatskapelle Berlin, the Berlin Symphony Orchestra and the Berlin Radio Orchestra, among others. He has played with the Berlin String Trio (formerly Gaede Trio) since 1992, which is documented by numerous CD recordings on the Tacet, Sony and Largo Records labels. His musical partners include Wolfgang Schulz, Markus Schirmer, Asher Fish and Javier Perianes. He also devotes himself to teaching. As a teacher, he was involved in the founding phase of the Barenboim-Said Foundation's music academy in Seville. Andreas Greger is Professor of Violoncello at the Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin.
Over the past 10 years,Tatjana Blome has recorded the sonata works of the German composer Gerhard Frommel for Naxos, as well as the complete piano oeuvre of Wolfgang Jacobi. She began recording the piano oeuvre of Walter Braunfels for Capriccio in cooperation with Deutschlandfunk Kultur. The first two CDs with works for piano and orchestra were released in September 2018 and 2019. She has recorded over 80 works for CD (Deutsche Grammophon, EDA and Naxos, among others) and radio. It is important to her to interpret new, unheard premiere recordings of composers who have been unjustly sidelined and to bring them to the public's attention. Growing up in Dortmund and taught by her father, Josef-Matthias Blome, she received a solid musical foundation, won the Steinway Competition at the age of 12 and then moved to Detmold to study with Renate Kretschmar-Fischer, where she remained as a junior student until her A-levels. She studied with Aribert Reimann and Heidrun Holtmann in Berlin and in Gerhard Oppitz's master class in Munich. Tatjana Blome performs as a soloist throughout Europe, including piano recitals in Austria, England, France, Slovenia, Portugal and Russia, and as a soloist with various orchestras. In Germany, she regularly performs as a soloist with orchestras such as the Dortmund Philharmonic Orchestra, the Göttingen Symphony Orchestra, the Trier Philharmonic Orchestra, the Jena Philharmonic Orchestra, the South Westphalian Philharmonic Orchestra, the Rhineland-Palatinate State Philharmonic Orchestra, the Bergische Symphoniker and the Kammersymphonie Berlin. Her regular chamber music partners include saxophonist Frank Lunte, violinist Elisabeth Glass, trumpeter Sören Linke and the classic chamber ensemble of the Deutsche Oper Berlin. She has been a lecturer at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music in Berlin since 2018.
