Stefania Neonato & Christine Busch
Biography Stefania Neonato & Christine Busch
Christine Busch
was born in Stuttgart and grew up in Mössingen / Tübingen. As a scholarship holder of the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes and the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, she studied with Wolfgang Marschner and Rainer Kussmaul in Freiburg, Boris Kuschnir in Vienna, and Nora Chastain in Winterthur. During this time she already had a chance to work with Concentus Musicus Wien (an inspiring experience with Nikolaus Harnoncourt and his musicians), the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, and the Freiburger Barockorchester.
Since then, she has enjoyed a successful career as a soloist and chamber musician on both ‘modern’ and ‘Baroque’ violin in concerts and at festivals in Europe, the USA, Japan, and Australia.
She particularly enjoys working as Konzertmeisterin with Philippe Herreweghe and Collegium Vocale Gent and with Kay Johannsen in Stuttgart.
Christine Busch made numerous CDs in the early part of her career, notably on harmonia mundi france, Dabringhaus und Grimm, and cpo, with such ensembles as Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Camerata des 18. Jahrhunderts, and Salzburger Hofmusik. Then, from 1997 to 2007, she recorded chiefly with Ensemble Explorations, in a series of releases on harmonia mundi france that included Rossini’s String Sonatas, string quintets by Boccherini, the Mendelssohn Octet, and works by Dvořák (the Bagatelles and the Piano Quintet op.81), played with the appropriate instrumentarium for the period of composition (the Dvořák, for example, was performed with gut strings and a Steinway piano dating from 1874).
In 2003 Carus Verlag Stuttgart released J. S. Bach’s sonatas for violin and obbligato harpsichord (with Kay Johannsen), followed on the same label in 2005 by a much praised CD of the quartets of Joseph Martin Kraus with the Salagon Quartett, her string quartet, which also performs with instruments appropriate to the period in a repertory ranging for the most part between Haydn and Mendelssohn. She recently recorded Schubert’s piano trios and ‘Trout’ Quintet for et‘cetera with France Springuel and Jan Vermeulen. She also performs regularly with the Epos Ensemble in Austria. From 1997 to 2000 Christine Busch was a Professor at the Hochschule der Künste Berlin. In the year 2000 she was appointed to a post at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Stuttgart.
Stefania Neonato
Born in Trento, Italy, Stefania Neonato belongs to a generation of artists busy with historical performance practices on period instruments but also interested in bridging modern piano performance tradition and current historical research.
Landmarks in Neonato’s career are the encounters with Alexander Lonquich, Riccardo Zadra and Malcolm Bilson with whom she earned a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Historical Performance Practice at Cornell University.
In 2007 she got top prize and Audience Prize at the International Fortepiano Competition “Musica Antiqua” in Bruges. From then on she is guest at some of the most important early music festivals and concert seasons in Europe and USA (Van Vlaanderen in Bruges, Styriarte in Graz, Festival Mozart in Rovereto, KlaraFestival in Bruxelles, Festival Alte Musik Knechtsteden, Boston-Early Music Festival, Kölner Fest für alte Musik, Regensburg-Tage Alter Musik, Potsdam Festspiele, Münster-Erbdrostenhof, Bologna-Accademia Filarmonica, Brescia-Teatro Grande, Florence-Accademia Bartolomeo Cristofori, Amici della Musica di Padova, Genoa - Giovine Orchestra Genovese, Madrid-Fundacion Juan March, Cornell Concert Series, Boston-Tufts University, Rome - Oratorio del Gonfalone, Vienna - Musikverein, Zagreb - Cristoforium, Lisbon - Noites de Queluz, Berlin - Alte Musik Live, Duisburger Philharmoniker – Duisburg, Haus der Musik Fruchtkasten – Stuttgart etc.).
In 2013 she was appointed Professor of historical pianos at the Musikhochschule in Stuttgart, Germany.
Active as pedagogue in international masterclasses, she published for “Early Music” (Oxford Journals), “Keyboard Perspectives” (Westfield Center) and Mimesis Edition (Milan), presenting her research on piano aesthetics at several conferences around the globe.
Her repertoire ranges from Classicism to the 20th century; several recordings mark Stefania Neonato’s career featuring solo (Mozart, Haydn, Clementi, Beethoven, Alkan) and chamber music on period pianos (Schubert, Beethoven, von Weber, Hummel). In 2024 Beethoven Violin-Sonaten with Christine Busch will be published for SWR Label.
In 2012 and 2016 she was invited in the jury of the two first editions of the International Fortepiano Competition “Giacomo Gotifredo Ferrari” in Rovereto, Italy. In 2018 she premiered and published Piano Music by G. G. Ferrari for Brilliant Classics.
