Eva-Maria May, Martin Rummel & Damien Gastl
Biography Eva-Maria May, Martin Rummel & Damien Gastl
Corinna Desch
studied with Igor Ozim and the Amadeus Quartett in Cologne. She finished her exams at the Royal College of Music in London as a DAAD scholarship holder and won the first prize in the university competition for violin and around the same time the second price in the Tonger competition. With violin concertos by Mendelsohn, Lalo, Glazunov, Tchaikovsky and Bartók, Corinna Desch made her appearance as a highly regarded soloist. Classic FM invited her to a one hour live violin recital, whose climax was the third solo sonata in D Minor by Ysaÿe.
At the beginning of her career, the violinist was concertmaster of the Ensemble Cologne with which she performed many premieres at the Donaueschinger Musiktage and also played in studio con- certs of the Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR). In the ensembles of Trevor Pinnock, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Sir Roger Norrington and the Freiburger Barockorchester, Corinna Desch appears as a regular guest. In 1993, she became a permanent member of the first violins with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Since 2003, she has been in the same position with the Bavarian State Orchestra and was awarded the Festspielpreis of the Munich Opera Festival. Her new co-operation as guest concert master at the Bavarian Chamber Orchestra in Bad Brückenau and the duo concert performances with pianist Eva-Maria May have provided her with great pleasures.
Martin Rummel
Born in 1974, Austrian cellist Martin Rummel can currently be heard on more than 50 albums – an unparalleled recording career in his generation. Martin Rummel is a regular guest at venues such as the Konzerthaus and Musikverein in Vienna, the Tonhalle Düsseldorf, de Doelen in Rotterdam or the Krannert Center in Urbana, in short: leading festivals, venues and orchestras in Europe, the US, Asia and the Pacifics. His playing is frequently honored with standing ovations from audiences, be it for concerto appearances such as his American debut with Tchaikovsky’s “Rococo Variations” or his extraordinary performances of the Complete Bach Cello Suites in one evening.
After early lessons from Wilfried Tachezi, Mr Rummel later studied with Maria Kliegel in Cologne and mainly with William Pleeth in London, whose last pupil he was to become. Not only because of his editions of all major cello etudes for Bärenreiter-Verlag he is now a renowned pedagogue himself and is regularly invited to give masterclasses all over the world. Furthermore, he is valued as a chamber music partner by musicians of all generations and is a passionate ambassador for classical music – as such he is amongst other things the owner and mastermind of paladino media (with its labels KAIROS, paladino music, Orlando Records and Austrian Gramphone) and, from 2016 to 2020, was Head of School at the University of Auckland’s School of Music.
Ahran Kim
The Korean-German flautist Ahran Kim, known for her strong musical commitment and her beautiful flute sound, is one of the most interesting and sought-after musical personalities of her generation. She has performed with such orchestras as the City of Birmingham Orchestra, Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, HR Symphony Orchestra and Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, under conductors such as Oliver Knussen, Andrew Litton, Thierry Fischer, Jacques van Steen, Myung-Whun Chung, Edward Gardner, Andris Nelsons and Jukka-Pekka Saraste.
Outside her orchestral activities, Ms. Kim regularly devotes herself to chamber music and 21st century music. She has performed with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and the Composer’s Ensemble in Great Britain. She was Artist in Residence at the Dartington International Summer School, where she also gave master classes.
Andreas Schablas
received his musical education at the Johannes-Brahms-Musikschule in his hometown Mürzzuschlag and at the music universities of Graz with Kurt Daghofer and Vienna with Peter Schmidl and above all Johann Hindler, furthermore he took lessons with Alfred Prinz and postgradually with Gerald Pachinger.
After several years as first clarinettist in the Vienna Chamber Orchestra and extensive temporary work in the major orchestras in Austria and Germany, he joined the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg in 1999. In 2008, he joined the Bavarian State Orchestra and, since 2010, has been its solo clarinettist. In addition to the standard repertoire, as a soloist he is particularly interested in the great works of the 20th century, including the Austrian premiere of the concerto by Jean Françaix, his debut at the Salzburg Festspielhaus with the concerto by Carl Nielsen, and Wolfgang Rihm’s Fremdes Licht at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.
Andreas Schablas is enthusiastically dedicated to contemporary music and has worked with Friedrich Cerha for many years. He premiered the Eight Bagatelles for clarinet and piano dedicated to him, the Clarinet Concerto and finally the Fantasy for clarinet and piano. For many years he has been a member of the Austrian Ensemble for New Music (OENM), and has also devoted himself intensively to literature for clarinet and bass clarinet solo.
An important focus of his musical work is chamber music. He received important impulses through his intensive collaboration with the Altenberg Trio Wien (Schuster, Ganz, Hornstein), as a member of the Arcus Ensemble Wien and with a wide variety of instrumentations he performs regularly at the Vienna Musikverein and Konzerthaus as well as most recently at London’s Wigmore Hall.
Damien Gastl
began his training in his hometown of Strasbourg. A Bachelor’s degree followed at the Hochschule für Musik in Dresden with Prof. Christiane Junghanns and in the Lied class of Prof. Olaf Bär. He made his opera debut in 2014 as Pierrot in Gluck’s Merlin’s Island at the Labortheater Dresden. This was followed by engagements at the Landesbühnen Sachsen as Deputé in Don Carlo and in university productions as Simon in Treemonisha or Guglielmo in Cosi fan tutte. His repertoire also includes roles such as Papageno, Guglielmo, Valentin and Graf Almaviva, with a particular passion for French music. The latter led to participation in a concert series in Dresden under the title French Nature. Damien Gastl regularly deepens his studies in master classes and since the winter semester 2018/19 he has been studying at the Theaterakademie August Everding in the master course Music Theatre/ Opera Singing.
Eva-Maria May
May made her first debut at the age of 14 with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Concerto in A Major, K 414. In Munich, she studied with Eric Then-Bergh and later in the masterclass of the renowned Hungarian Chopin specialist Julian von Karoly. Further studies with Igor Shukov, André Tschaikovsky and Valentin Gheorghiu deepened her connection to Russian piano music. As an active concert performer she toured Italy, England, France and did three tours to the U.S. In the Mirabell Castle in Salzburg she appeared as the solo artist in Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy, followed by a tour with Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto together with the State Philharmonic of Moldavia. Furthermore, she was the soloist in piano concertos of Ludwig van Beethoven, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Johann Sebastian Bach. Lasting impressions were made with her performances as a member of the Cenariu–Trio with violinists Kolja Lessing and Joshua Epstein and with a piano duo with Norman Shetler. As the result of a co-operation with the Bavarian State Radio, a number of CDs have been published with the works of Frédéric Chopin, Alexander Skriabin and Igor Stravinsky. Eva-Maria May lives in Munich and is a recipient of the prize of the German University Competition.
