Katharina Persicke
After completing her studies, Katharina Persicke quickly established her reputation as a concert singer throughout Europe and is regarded as one of the most interesting voices of her generation. Since 2005 she has been working together with the bel canto specialist Stefan Haselhoff (Basel), who has significantly influenced her. Katharina Persicke received prizes at the Schubert Competition in Graz and at the Queen Sonia Competition in Oslo. She attended master classes with Peter Schreier, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Julia Varady, Catherine Malfitano and Anne Lebozec.

She has held operatic roles (as Pamina in The Magic Flute, the Contessa in Figaro and as Marguerite in Faust) at the Semperoper in Dresden, the Freiburg City Theater, the Oldenburg State Theater, the Theater Baden bei Wien, the Theater Augsburg and at the Teatro Real in Madrid. At the Feldkirch and Herrenchiemsee Festivals Katharina Persicke has been received with enthusiasm by both the public and the press over the past years. She has worked with such conductors as Andris Nelsons, Thomas Hengelbrock, Sylvain Cambreling, Steven Sloane, Kay Johannsen, Vasily Petrenko and Enoch zu Guttenberg.

Her musical partners include the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the SWR Baden-Baden and Freiburg Symphony Orchestra, the NDR Hannover Symphony Orchestra, the musicians of the Munich Philharmonic, the Bochum Symphony Orchestra, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Amaryllis Quartett and the pianists Pauliina Tukiainen and Nicholas Rimmer. The soprano expressed her love for the art song in a special way when she helped to launch the song cycle Klangwerk Lied, under the patronage of Irwin Gage, in 2011.

Numerous recordings document Katharina Persicke’s musical work. Her solo CDs include Mirrors, released in 2013, featuring songs by Jean Sibelius and Kaija Saariaho and Proses lyriques, released in 2014, which features works by Alban Berg, Claude Debussy and Richard Wagner. In 2016, Katharina Persicke will be making her debut apperance at the Bayreuth Festival as a Flowermaiden in Parsifal under the musical direction of Andris Nelsons.

Amaryllis Quartett
After winning the Finalists’ Prize at the Premio Paolo Borciani 2011 in Reggio Emilia (no First Prize was awarded) and then, only four weeks later, winning First Prize and the Grand Prize at the 6th Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition, the Amaryllis Quartett now numbers among the first rank of string quartets of their generation.

The four young musicians, who first studied with Walter Levin in Basel and later with the Alban Berg Quartet in Cologne, have also won prizes at international competitions in Heerlen, Eindhoven and Graz and have been awarded a scholarship by the German Music Council. The quartet regularly appears in concert series and at festivals, including the Lucerne Festival and Società del Quartetto di Milano, and have been invited to appear at the Schwetzinger Festspiele, Vienna’s Musikverein, the Melbourne Recital Centre and Tokyo’s Dai-ichi Seimei Hall.

The quartet has been featured in recordings and productions by German broadcasters SWR, WDR, NDR, BR, as well as Swiss Radio DRS and Radio France. In addition they have initiated their own recital series at Hamburg’s Laeiszhalle and the Concert Hall in Solothurn, Switzerland.

The members of the quartet always strive to program standard quartet literature with contemporary compositions as well as revive forgotten masterpieces such as the music of Béla Bartók pupil Géza Frid (world premiere recording). The Amaryllis Quartett enjoys combining works from the Viennese classical period with those of the Second Viennese School in their recitals.

The Amaryllis Quartett regularly performs with chamber music partners Barbara Westphal, Dimitri Ashkenazy, François Benda, Patrick Demenga, Jens Peter Maintz and Gustav Rivinius.