Philipp Schupelius, Metamorphosen Berlin, Yukino Kaihara & Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt
Biography Philipp Schupelius, Metamorphosen Berlin, Yukino Kaihara & Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt
Philipp Schupelius
In March 2024, Classic FM chose Philipp Schupelius as one of the 30 most exciting young musicians in the world. The award-winning young cellist has already thrilled his audiences as a soloist and chamber musician on numerous European stages. He is passionate about special concert formats and combining different art forms in a concert experience. He is currently studying at the Kronberg Academy in the class of Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt, made possible by the Sodalitas sponsorship.
At the age of 17, Philipp Schupelius was awarded the Discovery Award of the International Classical Music Awards (ICMA). In October 2022 he received the Boris Pergamenschikow Grant and in the same month the Fanny Mendelssohn Prize.
He was also awarded the First Great Award of the Manhattan Music Competition at the end of 2021 and the silver medal of the Eurovision Young Musicians Contest in 2022. In August 2023, Philipp Schupelius won the German Music Competition in Bonn. In the coming season he will be a debut artist in the Nikolaisaal, Potsdam.
Philipp Schupelius was able to learn from exceptional musicians, first and foremost of course from Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt, whose student he has been for six years. Before that, he was taught by Ulrich Voss. He received important advice from Justin Pearson, Daniel Hope and Anssi Karttunen. The Hoelzer v. Borckesche Music Foundation has been supporting Philipp since 2020.
Yukino Kaihara
was born in Hiroshima, Japan. There she began her musical career early and was able to attract attention in international competitions such as the Chopin Competition. In 2018 she made her debut at the Suntory Hall in Tokyo with Ravel's piano concerto.
As a prizewinner of the Tokyo Music Competition and after successfully participating in the Long-Thibaud-Crespin Competition in Paris, she has played with orchestras such as the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra and the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra in recent years. Yukino Kaihara received a scholarship from the Munetsugu Angel Fundraising in 2014 and 2015. Since 2017 she has been supported by a scholarship from the Yamaha Music Europe Foundation (YMEF), and since 2021 she has been a scholarship holder at the Röhm Academy.
She studied with Kei Itoh in Tokyo, where she received a first degree with special distinction, and is currently continuing her studies at the Berlin University of the Arts with Björn Lehmann. Yukino Kaihara is in demand as a soloist and chamber musician as well as a répétiteur and has accompanied violinists and cellists at the Japanese Music Competition, the International Long-Thibaud-Crespin Competition and the International Concours Reine Elisabeth. Since 2023 she has been working as a répétiteur at the Berlin University of the Arts.
Metamorphosen Berlin
"Devoted sound culture at its finest!" is what the Hessischer Rundfunk says about the Metamorphosen Berlin Chamber Philharmonic. And indeed, the ensemble, founded in Berlin in 2010 by violinist Indira Koch and cellist Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt, has set standards with its award-winning recordings. The first CD, Inspiration, was released in 2015 with works by Dvorák, Suk and Victor Herbert, and the second CD with a recording of all of Peter Tchaikovsky's works for strings was released in April 2017. The BBC Magazine wrote about the 2021 CD Very British with works by Elgar, Britten, Warlock and Jenkins: “This is an album that should redefine what it means to be ‘very British’”.
Musicians from Berlin’s leading orchestras, renowned chamber musicians and international award winners come together at Metamorphosen and perform with famous soloists such as Johannes Moser, Gary Hoffman, Frans Helmerson, Julius Berger, Jens Peter Maintz, Young-Chang Cho and Camille Thomas.
Metamorphosen Berlin is passionate about new music, and composers such as Helmut Abel, Sören Nils Eichberg and George Alexander Albrecht have written works especially for the ensemble. In 2022/23, Metamorphosen Berlin was able to gain its first composer in residence, the well-known composer Enjott Schneider. He also created new concert formats, such as the musical implementation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde together with the German voice of James Bond, Dietmar Wunder, as speaker.
Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt
"Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt is one of the leading cellists of his generation, of our time," said none other than Mstislav Rostropovich. Even during his studies with David Geringas and Aldo Parisot, Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt was able to attract attention at numerous competitions. He was a prizewinner of the International P.I. Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow and the International Rostropovich Competition, as well as the winner of the German Music Competition.
Since then, Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt has conquered the concert stages of the world as a soloist and played with conductors such as Marek Janowski, Charles Dutoit, Sir Donald Runnicles, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Jirí Belohlávek, Gabriel Feltz, Michael Sanderling and many others.
In addition to his solo work, Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt is enthusiastically devoted to chamber music. He is a member of the Gropius Quartet and has been performing with Jens Peter Maintz as Cello Duello for over thirty years. His chamber music partners have included Lang Lang, Christoph Eschenbach, Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos, Gil Shaham, Julia Fischer, Gidon Kremer and Mischa Maisky.
In recent years, Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt has increasingly concentrated on his work as a conductor and has received invitations to perform with the Dortmund Philharmonic, the Rheinische Philharmonie State Orchestra, the Göttingen Symphony Orchestra, the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie and the St. Petersburg State Academic Orchestra, to name just a few.
Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt teaches as a professor at the Franz Liszt University of Music in Weimar and at the Kronberg Academy.