9th INTERNATIONAL VIOLIN COMPETITION HENRI MARTEAU
Our Jury
UK / Switzerland / Hungary
Gilbert Varga, Chair
Gilbert Varga initially studied violin with his father, Tibor Varga. He performed as a soloist with the Hofer Symphoniker in the early 1970’s, before training as a conductor with Franco Ferrara and Sergiu Celibidache among others. His appointment as principle conductor of the Hofer Symphoniker from 1980 until 1985, developed into a long-standing relationship. Since 2008 he brings his valued experience - between 2001 and 2012 Varga conducted the final rounds of the Queen Elizabeth Competition in Brussels - to the International Violin Competition Henri Marteau, once again as jury chair and artistic advisor.
From 1985 until 1990 principle conductor of the Philharmonia Hungarica, Varga then worked in Stuttgart and Malmö before becoming music director of the Basque National Orchestra in 1997. He served as the principle conductor of the Taipei Symphony Orchestra, and of the Pannon Philharmonic Orchestra in Hungary from 2019 until 2021.
As a guest conductor, Gilbert Varga has led many of the world's best orchestras, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, the Orchestre de Paris, the Oslo Philharmonic, and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. His discography is vast including recordings of the concertos by Ravel and Prokofiev with the Deutschen Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and Anna Vinnitskaya on Naïve Records which received five stars from the BBC Music Magazine.
Germany
Prof. Mirijam Contzen
Mirijam Contzen is highly esteemed by the international musical world as a soloist, chamber musician, festival director and teacher. Her playing combines grandeur and technical mastery to create compellingly refined interpretations. Mirijam Contzen’s distinctive sound and unique power of expression testify to a profoundly individual musical understanding.
From the outset of her performing career, Mirijam Contzen has been a staunch advocate of unknown repertoire. In January 2020 Sony Classical released the two violin concertos of Franz Clement with the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne under the direction of Reinhard Goebel. The second violin concerto is a world premiere recording. This album was awarded with the “Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik” as best recording (02/2020) as well as with the OPUS Klassik.
Released in the 21/22 season, as part of the "New Mozarts" series for Sony Classical, her new album of the violin concerto in E flat major KV 365, which was attributed to Mozart. This is the first recording of this piece since 1965. Partners are the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg conducted by Reinhard Goebel. For her début CD, that was awarded the Echo Preis in 2001, she chose seldom played works by Hubay, Ferrara and Geszler.
She has performed with leading orchestras across the globe, including Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, the German Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra, Israel Chamber Orchestra, the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Sydney Symphony Orchestra.
Conductors with whom she has worked include Iván Fischer, Gianandrea Noseda, Reinhard Goebel, Vladimir Fedosejev, Leif Segerstam, Lothar Zagrosek, RaphaelFrühbeck de Burgos, Christopher Hogwood, Eliahu Inbal, Tomas Netopil, Michael Sanderling, Mario Venzago and Gabriel Feltz.
Her passion for chamber music has led to collaborations with highly renowned musicians such as Emmanuel Ax, Joshua Bell, Misha Maisky, Clemens Hagen, Herbert Schuch, Bernd Glemser, Tobias Bredohl and Giovanni Guzzo.
In 2016, Mirijam Contzen was appointed professor of violin at Berlin University of the Arts. Of particular concern to her is the fostering of exceptional young talent on the violin, the commitment to training music teachers, and the interest in learning processes in society.
Austria
Prof. Michael Frischenschlager
Professor Michael Frischenschlager, an internationally renowned violinist and teacher, studied violin, conducting, and musicology in his hometown of Salzburg, Cologne, Vienna, and Rome. Influential teachers in violin included Theodor Müller, André Gertler, Franz Samohyl, and Yehudi Menuhin.
After engagements with various Viennese orchestras, Michael Frischenschlager primarily devoted himself to concert performances as a soloist and chamber musician in almost all European countries, North America, and Asia.
In 1971, he became a professor of violin at the Vienna Music University. He became head of the string department in 1984 and then held the position as rector from 1992 until 1996. Over the years, a large number of outstanding violinists and musicians from many nations have emerged from his class: awardees of major competitions, violin teachers, members of famous chamber music ensembles and leading orchestras in Austria, Europe and Asia.
Apart from giving master classes all over the world, he is the president of Fritz Kreisler Competition Vienna and was president of the European String Teachers Association Austria and vice president of the World Federation of International Music competitions. He also was the founder and for 14 years head, of the Vienna Music Universities International Summer Academy Prague-Vienna-Budapest since 1991.
Germany
Prof. Erika Geldsetzer
Erika Geldsetzer has been the violinist of the Fauré Quartet since it was founded in 1995 and has been a lecturer in violin at the Berlin University of the Arts since 2014. Since 2024 she has been Professor of Violin at the University of Music, Würzburg.
She performs with the Fauré Quartet on the world's most important stages, e.g. in London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Buenos Aires, New York, Tokyo etc., as well as at the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, Rheingau Festival and the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival, and from 2012 to 2016 the quartet was artistic director of the Festspielfrühling Rügen.
Deutsche Grammophon has released CDs with piano quartets by Mozart, Mendelssohn and Brahms, among others. The quartet was awarded the Klassik Echo Prize for their recordings of Brahms and a collection of pop songs, and Sony released a CD with piano quartets by Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler as well as arrangements for piano quartet and voice of songs by Richard Strauss and Mahler with the world-famous soprano Simone Kermes, made especially for the Faure Quartet.
She performs regularly as a soloist with orchestras such as the SWR Radio Symphony Orchestra, the MDR Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Duisburg Philharmonic, the Philarmonia Romania, the RhP State Youth Orchestra, the South Westphalian Philharmonic and the Robert Schumann Philharmonic Chemnitz under conductors such as Christian Järvi, Stefan Blunier and Elias Grandy. As concertmaster of the European Union Youth Orchestra (1995 - 2000) she worked with conductors such as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Bernhard Haitink, Sir Colin Davis and Mstislav Rostropovitsch.
From 2006 to 2010 she was a guest lecturer at the Royal Academy of Music, from 2009 to 2012 she was a lecturer at the Rhineland-Palatinate Chamber Music Foundation Villa Musica and is a founding member of the string quartet Villa Musica (2001-2012) together with Nicolaus Chumachenco, Enrique Santiago (later Benjamin Rivinius) and Martin Ostertag.
In 2011, Erika Geldsetzer founded the Fountain Duo together with the English pianist and conductor Ian Fountain, with whom she performs regularly. Together with the cellist David Geringas, they often expand into a piano trio.
Erika Geldsetzer gives solo and chamber music courses at the Academia Internazionale di Musica, Cervo, Italy, the Boszok Music Festival in Hungary, AIMS Foundation Solsona, Spain, and at the Academy for Music and Dance, Jerusalem, Israel, among others.
USA
Prof. Ilya Kaler
Prof. Ilya Kaler is considered one of the most outstanding personalities of the violin whose career ranges from that of a soloist and recording artist (with Naxos Records and Ongaku Records) to chamber musician and professor. He is the only violinist to win the Gold Medal at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, the Sibelius Competition in Helsinki, and the Paganini Competition in Genoa.
As a soloist, Mr. Kaler has performed with world-renowned orchestras from St. Petersburg, Moscow and the U.S.A. as well as the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra, Montreal Symphony Orchestra, the Danish and Berlin Radio Orchestras and the Zurich Chamber Orchestra^1. He has collaborated with a number of outstanding conductors such as Valery Gergiev, Dmitry Kitaenko, Mariss Jansons. Kaler served as concertmaster of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, a position in which he regularly worked as a guest in the major US American orchestras. With recitals and as a member of the Tempest Trio he has toured the world.
Ilya Kaler, now a sought-after teacher received his education at the Moscow Central Music School and was influenced, and inspired by his long-time mentor Abram Shtern. Since 2018 he has taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music and has held professorships in Rochester, Bloomington and the DePaul University School of Music in Chicago.
Romania / France
Prof. Silvia Marcovici
Prof. Silvia Marcovici was born in Romania and studied at the Conservatory in Bucharest with Ştefan Gheorghiu. At the age of 16, she made her international debut with the Residentie Orkest Den Haag under Bruno Maderna. She is a laureate of the prestigious Long-Thibaud Competition in Paris, received a special prize from Prince Rainier of Monaco for her interpretation of a contemporary work, and won the International George Enescu Competition in Bucharest.
Since then, she has performed with leading orchestras in Europe, Israel, Japan, North and South America, working with numerous famous conductors, including Claudio Abbado, Simon Rattle, Riccardo Muti, André Previn, Zubin Mehta and Herbert Blomstedt. Furthermore, Silvia Marcovici has devoted herself intensively to chamber music.
A milestone in her career was a performance with the London Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Leopold Stokowski, recorded by DECCA, where she played the Glazunov concerto. Her recordings also include the violin concertos by Sibelius and Carl Nielsen, as well as Beethoven's violin sonatas. The Canadian label DOREMI released live recordings with Silvia Marcovici in their CD and DVD series "Legendary Treasures".
Silvia Marcovici is a passionate and active teacher and is currently professor at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz.
Germany
Prof. Lena Neudauer
Lena Neudauer was born in Munich in 1984. She began playing the violin at the age of three, and at the age of eleven she joined the class of Helmut Zehetmair at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. She later studied with Christoph Poppen, as well as Helmut and Thomas Zehetmair. At the age of fifteen, she won the Leopold Mozart Competition in Augsburg spectacularly, receiving almost all the special prizes.
Her debut CD was released by Hänssler Classic in 2010 (Deutsches Radio Philharmonie under Pablo Gonzalez). The complete Schumann recording was honored with the International Classical Music Award (ICMA). Her recording of Beethoven's Violin Concerto and Romances was released for the Beethoven anniversary in 2020 and was honored with the Supersonic Award.
In the field of chamber music, she enjoys an intensive collaboration with, among others, Julian Steckel, Julia Fischer, Sebastian Klinger, Matthias Kirschnereit, Herbert Schuch, Lauma Skride and Nils Mönkemeyer. In the Soloists' Quintet with Silke Avenhaus, Wen Xiao Zheng, Sebastian Klinger and Rick Stoijn, Lena Neudauer devotes herself to special projects. For example, Schubert's Trout Quintet was performed in combination with the new composition “Ein Forellenteich” (a joint project by Ferran Cruixent, Osmo Tapio Räihälä, Gerald Resch, Johannes Schachtner, Dejan Lazic). The project was supported by the Kultursekretariat NRW and released on CD by CAvi. Lena Neudauer has performed under the direction of conductors such as Mariss Jansons, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, Reinhard Goebel and Bruno Weil.
In 2010, at the age of 26, Lena Neudauer was appointed professor of violin at the Saar Academy of Music. Since 2016 she has held a professorship at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich.
USA / Germany
Prof. Kurt Sassmannshaus
urt Sassmannshaus holds the Dorothy Richard Starling Chair for Classical Violin at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM). His students perform as soloists, hold appointments at major conservatories and orchestras in Europe, Asia and America, and play in renowned string quartets.
He founded the Starling Preparatory String Project in 1987 in Cincinnati as a training ground for exceptional young string talent from the United States and abroad. Alumni from program have won prizes in major competitions, including the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, Naumburg in New York.
His pioneering website www.violinmasterclass.com was published in 2004. Since the launch, the site has given millions of students, parents, and teachers access to sophisticated knowledge about violin technique, practice methods and performance. He continues to expand the pedagogic works in Bärenreiter’s Sassmannshaus Tradition, continuing the work started by his father Egon Sassmannshaus.
His first teachers were his father, Gert Hoelscher, and Conrad von der Goltz in Würzburg, Germany. He studied in Cologne with Igor Ozim and at New York’s Juilliard School with Dorothy DeLay. He worked closely with her both in Cincinnati and at the Aspen Music Festival and School. In the summer, he has been teaching at the Bowdoin International Music Festival in Maine since 2015.
Germany
Prof. Ingolf Turban
For many years, the Munich-born violinist Ingolf Turban has been performing as a soloist in major concert halls around the world, including the Berlin and Munich Philharmonie, the Kennedy Center in Washington, the Avery Fisher Hall in New York, the Tonhalle in Zurich, the Golden Hall of the Vienna Musikverein and La Scala in Milan. He has collaborated with conductors such as Sergiu Celibidache, Charles Dutoit, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Yehudi Menuhin, Jun Märkl, Yutaka Sado, Franz Welser-Möst, Andris Nelsons and Marcello Viotti.
Ingolf Turban's commitment to the work of Niccolò Paganini has achieved critical acclaim, such as his 2006 performance with the New York Philharmonic, the complete recordings of the six violin concertos (Telos Records) and in the TV documentary "Paganini's Secret" (merkur.tv). In 2005, Turban founded the chamber orchestra "I Virtuosi di Paganini".
His extensive repertoire of all musical styles has been documented on over 40 CD productions. Many works, for which he presented highly acclaimed premier recordings, have now found their way into the common concert repertoire.
In 2006 Ingolf Turban, who had taught at the Stuttgart University of Music and Performing Arts for eleven years, accepted a position at the University of Music and Theater in Munich. In 2021 he received the International Classical Music Award
China / Germany
Prof. Tianwa Yang
Winner of the prestigious OPUS KLASSIK Instrumentalist of the Year in 2022 for her recording of Prokofiev’s Violin Concertos and in 2015 for her recording Ysaÿe’s 6 Sonatas for Solo Violin, the Annual Prize of the German Record Critics 2014 for her recordings of the Complete Music for Violin by Sarasate, Tianwa Yang is referred to as “an unquestioned master of the violin” by American Record Guide who “rises above her competition” (Fanfare). Heralded by the Detroit News as “the most important violinist to come on the scene in many a year,” she performs with such major orchestras as the Detroit, Seattle, Baltimore, Vancouver, Sydney, Singapore and New Zealand Symphonies; as well as WDR-Cologne, MDR-Leipzig, HR-Radio Frankfurt Symphony Orchestras; the London, BBC, Dresden, Helsinki, Hong Kong and Warsaw Philharmonics. International concert and recital engagements take her to the Ravinia, Virginia Arts, Lucerne, Rheingau Music, Mozartfest Würzburg and Heidelberger Frühling Festivals, Berlin’s Philharmonic Hall, London’s Wigmore Hall, Paris’ Salle Pleyel, New York’s Lincoln Center and Leipzig’s Gewandhaus.
As a critically acclaimed recording artist, Tianwa Yang has recorded many award-winning CDs during her collaboration with the Naxos label. Her most recent releases include George Antheil’s violin sonatas with pianist Nicholas Rimmer, Prokofiev’s Violin Concertos with ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and Jun Märkl, Brahms’ Violin Concerto with Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and Antoni Wit; and two highly acclaimed volumes of the Complete Music for Violin and Orchestra by Wolfgang Rihm.
Considered the “worlds best interpreter of the music of Pablo de Sarasate since Heifetz”, David Hurwitz of Classics Today calls Tianwa Yang for her recordings of the complete works by Sarasate “a sensationally talented violinist,” while All Things Strings speaks of her “stunning effortless virtuosity” and “uncanny affinity for Spanish music “.
Raised in Beijing, China, Tianwa Yang began studying violin at the age of four. Demonstrating unquestionable ability, she won six competitions as a young child. At the age of ten she was accepted to study at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing as a student of Lin Yaoji. Within one year, Hong Kong media described the young artist as “A Pride of China.” Tianwa Yang recorded the 24 Paganini Caprices at the age of thirteen, making her the youngest artist to release the works. In 2003 she was awarded a scholarship by the German Academic Exchange Service to study chamber music in Germany, marking the beginning of her European career.
She is Professor of Violin at the University of the Arts, Bern, Switzerland, Professor at the Hochschule für Musik, Würzburg, and is grateful to Lin Yaoji, Jörg-Wolfgang Jahn and Anner Bylsma for the musical insight and support they have offered throughout her career.