Thomas Quasthoff is considered one of the most notable singers in his discipline, appearing regularly with the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics and with many other leading orchestras, as well as being a highly-successful chamber music and concert singer at all of the important concert stages and festivals throughout the world. His musical training was with Charlotte Lehmann and Ernst Huber-Contwig in Hanover. He has received numerous national and international awards, including First Prize at the ARD competition in Munich (1988), the Shostakovich Prize in Moscow (1996), the Hamada Trust / Scotsman Festival Prize at the Edinburgh International Festival in 1996, and three Grammy Awards. In 1996, Thomas Quasthoff become a professor at Detmold’s Hochschule fur Musik, and in 2004 moved to the Hochschule fur Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin, where he dedicates himself to teaching young singers.
Forty years ago, Pieter Alferink founded an agency in Amsterdam with a focus on representing and managing singers and conductors. He has organized concerts featuring musicians such as Hermann Prey, Margaret Price, José Carreras, Luciano Pavarotti and Marilyn Horne. In addition, he also helped a new generation of Lied singers to make their Holland debut, including Barbara Bonney, Christiane Oelze, and Thomas Quasthoff.
For five years, Pieter Alferink was president of the Association Européenne des Agents Artistiques. Upon his inspiration, the international list "Classical Music Artists" came into being, the first complete, online database updated semi-annually that registers the personal and local agents of classical artists around the world. In May 2009, he retired from work in the agency. Today, Pieter Alferink consults organizers, opera houses, recording studios, festivals and orchestras as well as young singers, and is a guest lecturer at music academies and conservatories.
Annette Dasch has by now established herself as one of the world’s leading sopranos, having successfully debuted at Bayerische Staatsoper, La Scala, and the Salzburg Festival. She studied at Hochschule für Musik in Munich and is still coached today by her teacher there, Josef Loibl. Since her international career began in 2000, when she won competitions in Barcelona and Geneva, Annette Dasch has made appearances at Bayerische Staatsoper, Berlin’s Deutsche Staatsoper, Dresden’s Sächsische Staatsoper, Opéra National de Paris, Théatre des Champs-Élysées, Théatre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, and Tokyo’s New National Theatre, as well as the Salzburg Festival, Innsbrucker Festwochen, Wiener Festwochen, and Styriarte, Graz. In the 2008/09 season, she will be singing with the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics under the direction of Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Sir Simon Rattle, and Seiji Ozawa, and performing at Vienna’s Konzerthaus, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, and Schubertiade Schwarzenberg, and will return as Elettra (Idomeneo) to Bayerische Staatsoper and as Armida to the Salzburger Festspiele. In coming seasons, she has been invited to perform at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, London’s Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, and the Bayreuth Festival. Annette Dasch is under exclusive contract with SONY BMG. This past fall, her CD of Mozart arias was released.
Helmut Deutsch was born in Vienna, and studied piano and composition at the city’s conservatory and musicology at the Vienna University. In 1967, he received the composition prize of the city of Vienna.
Already during his years of study, he began to focus on chamber music and song accompaniment. As a partner of many internationally-renowned instrumentalists, Helmut Deutsch has participated in almost all forms of chamber music. As an accompanist, he has been the partner to many of the most important singers of our time, including Juliane Banse, Barbara Bonney, Brigitte Fassbaender, Angelika Kirchschlager, Christiane Oelze, Anne Sophie von Otter, Olaf Bär, Matthias Goerne, Jonas Kaufmann, Thomas Quasthoff, Peter Schreier, and many others.
For twelve years he worked closely with Hermann Prey. His concert activity has taken him to all parts of the world, and he is a frequent guest at the most important music centers and festivals. Many of his numerous recordings have been awarded prizes. Having taught in the Musikhochschule in Vienna, Helmut Deutsch is today a professor for song at Munich’s conservatory and regularly gives classes in musical interpretation throughout Europe and Japan. Many of his numerous recordings have been awarded with prizes.
In 1994, Martin Engstroem founded the Verbier Festival and Academy, which he continues to direct to this day. This festival, which takes place every summer in the Swiss Alps, is one of the leading festivals in Europe and offers both an exquisite concert series and an elite musical training. The academy offers not only workshops with great artists and renowned pedagogues, but also its own event series, and is considered a talent factory for young artists. Since 2000, Verbier has had its own orchestra, the UBS Verbier Festival Orchestra. Before founding Verbier, Martin Engestroem worked from 1975 to 1987 as an agent, representing artists such as Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Barbara Hendricks, Jessye Norman, Birgit Nilsson, Renato Bruson, Karl Böhm, Bernhard Haitink, and Giuseppe Sinopoli. Martin Engestroem was Vice President of Artists and Repertoire at Deutsche Grammophone from 1999 until 2005, and since then has been the Global Advisor of Artistic Planning for IMG Artists.
Brigitte Fassbaender was born in Berlin and studied voice with her father, Willy Domgraf-Fassbaender. She debuted with the Munich Staatsoper, and during her career sang all of the important roles in her field. She was a guest at all the leading opera houses in the world, working with all of the important conductors of our time. Over the years, concert and chamber performances played an ever-increasing role in her work as a musician. She has made over 200 recordings during her career. In early 1995, Brigitte Fassbaender ended her singing career in order to fully dedicate herself to directing, which has been her major interest since 1990. Since then, she has presented over 40 productions in Germany and abroad. She is also highly in demand as a voice teacher and masterclass teacher. From 1995 to 1997, she was the opera director at the Staatstheater in Braunschweig. Since then, she has worked as a freelance director: since the 1999-2000 season she was director of the Tirol Landestheater in Innsbruck, and beginning in 2009 she will take up the artistic directorship of the Richard Strauss Festival.
Born in Yorkshire, England, pianist Charles Spencer studied with Max Pirani at the Academy of Music in London. He received numerous prizes already as a student, including a stipend from the Austrian government, which enabled him to continue his studies in Vienna. He graduated with honors from Vienna’s Hochschule für Musik, where he studied with Walter Fleischmann, and won the Austrian government’s prize for artistic achievement.
Today, Charles Spencer is one of the most sought-after collaborative pianists. For ten years he was Christa Ludwig’s unique accompanist, but he has also accompanied important singers such as Jessye Norman, Gundula Janowitz, Marjana Lipovsek, Peter Schreier, Thomas Hampson, and Thomas Quasthoff. Charles Spencer has taught song interpretation at Vienna’s Universität für Musik und Darstellende Kunst since 1999.