For decades, Tanja Tetzlaff has been one of the most influential musicians of her generation, both as soloist and chamber musician. Her playing is characterized by a uniquely fine yet powerful and nuanced sound, which always goes hand in hand with cultivated musicality. Tanja Tetzlaff’s trademark is her extraordinarily broad repertoire and her desire for new, groundbreaking concert formats.
In April 2021, Tanja Tetzlaff became the first scholarship holder to be awarded the highly endowed Glenn Gould Bach Fellowship of the city of Weimar. She now has the opportunity to realize a two-year film project relating Bach’s famous cello suites to nature and climate change issues: Suites4Nature / Suites for a Wounded World.
Tanja Tetzlaff is a founding member of the Tetzlaff Quartet (Christian Tetzlaff, Elisabeth Kufferath, and Hanna Weinmeister). She plays a cello by Giovanni Baptista Guadagnini from 1776.

In recent years, Norwegian pianist Gunilla Süssmann has been reaping steadily increasing acclaim and has become a much sought-after artist on an international level. Her virtuosity, combined with strong sensitivity and imagination, is highly praised, and her thoroughly personal, passionate interpretations forge a unique bond with audiences and critics. She has performed in venues such as Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Wigmore Hall, the Louvre, and Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, and is a popular guest at major chamber music festivals in Norway and across Europe. The English Chamber Orchestra, the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, the Oslo Philharmonic, the WDR Cologne and the Staatskapelle Weimar are amongst the many orchestras with whom she has played. Chamber music holds a special place in her heart, and the core of that devotion is her 12-year collaboration with cellist Tanja Tetzlaff. Critics describe their symbiotic playing as magical, and the duo has recorded two CDs on the Avi label.

“One of the most brilliant and inquisitive artists of the new generation”, said the New York Times of Christian Tetzlaff, one of today’s most highly demanded soloists on stages all over the world. As at home in the classical and romantic repertoire as in contemporary music, Christian Tetzlaff sets standards with his interpretations of the violin concertos of Beethoven, Brahms and Tchaikovsky as well as Berg, Schönberg, Shostakovich and Ligeti. He is particularly well-known for his incomparable performances of the Bach Solo Sonatas and Partitas. In 2005 he was chosen by Musical America as “Instrumentalist of the Year”. He frequently played recitals with Leif Ove Andsnes and Lars Vogt. As a soloist and chamber musician he has performed in all international musical centres, including amongst others New York’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Centre, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Vienna’s Konzerthaus and Musikverein, and in London, Paris, Berlin and Munich.
Christian Tetzlaff plays a violin by German violinmaker Peter Greiner.

Volker Jacobsen studied viola at the Lübeck Academy of Music with Prof. Barbara Westphal. Ever since youth he has bee passionately devoted to chamber music; in 1989 he founded the Artemis Quartet, of which he remained a member until 2007. The Artemis Quartet won the Munich ARD International Music Competition and the Paolo Borciani Prize. They went on to make a great number of CD recordings and appeared at all major international classical music venues, as well as in two films directed by Bruno Monsaigeon. Jacobsen was Professor of Chamber Music at Berlin University of the Arts, as well as at the Chapelle Musicale Reine Élisabeth in Brussels. In 2007 he was appointed Viola Professor at Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media.

Born in the German town of Düren in 1970, Lars Vogt has established himself as one of the leading pianists of his generation. By winning Second Prize at Leeds International Piano Competition in 1990 he launched a remarkable career that has led him to concertize in all the major classical music venues worldwide. Vogt not only performs as solo pianist and as a chamber musician, but also increasingly as a conductor. He took up the post of Music Director of Royal Nothern Sinfonia in Newcastle (England).
Highlights of Lars Vogt's 2015/2016 season include concerts with the LSO, CBSO, Schottish Chamber and Hallé, with the Bavarian Radio SO, Orchestre de Paris etc. In the US he played with Baltimore Symphony and St. Louis Symphony and toured extensively with the Tetzlaff siblings as well as in Japan.
With his passion for chamber music, Lars Vogt has become the professional partner and friend of many first-rate musicians in the classical music field. As the founder and artistic director of SPANNUNGEN Chamber Music Festival he has fulfilled a long-held dream. In 2007 he received the Annual German Music Critics Circle Award for the collected live recordings of Heimbach performances from 1999 to 2006.
As an EMI recording artist, Lars Vogt made fifteen discs for the label, including collaborations with the Berliner Philharmoniker under Claudio Abbado and with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Simon Rattle. Recent releases on other labels include Mozart piano concertos with Frankfurt RSO (Paavo Järvi), a solo CD with works by Liszt and Schumann, and two duo CDs and a successsful trio CD. Especially his recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations received rave reviews.
Lars Vogt is the founder of “Rhapsody In School”, an acclaimed educational initiative with important reper-cussions in Germany and abroad. The project presented its featured artists as “Rhapsody In Concert” for the first time at the Konzerthaus in Berlin in 2012. That same year, Lars Vogt was appointed Professor of Piano at the Hannover Conservatory of Music.

Lars died September 5th 2022

Gustav Rivinius was the only German musician to be awarded the 1st prize and the gold medal of the International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1990. Since then he has performed as a soloist all over the world with leading musicians, orchestras and conductors. He is equally passionate about chamber music. He founded the Rivinius Piano Quartet, the Trio Gasparo da Salò, the Tammuz Piano Quartet and the Bartholdy Quintet and is a sought-after guest at important music festivals.
He regularly performs with Lars Vogt, Christian Tetzlaff, Antje Weithaas, Isabelle Faust and Sharon Kam, among others, and numerous CD recordings attest to his artistic activity. Gustav Rivinius has been a professor at the Hochschule für Musik Saar for many years. He gives annual master classes and was a juror at the International Tchaikovsky Competition.

British/American cellist Bartholomew LaFollette has a rich and varied career as an international soloist and chamber musician. After being launched by YCAT (Young Classical Artists Trust) with numerous performances at the Wigmore Hall, Barbican Centre, Bridgewater Hall and the Royal Festival Hall, Bartholomew went on to win first prize at The Arts Club’s and Decca Records’ inaugural Classical Music Award. He was also the first recipient of the Irish Chamber Orchestra’s Ardán Award. Bartholomew is artistic director of the Marryat Players International Chamber Music Festival, which takes place annually in Wimbledon Village.

Hailed by the Irish Times for being “as free in touching the heartstrings as he was in dashing off dazzling runs”, Bartholomew’s highlights with orchestra include performances of Dvořák’s Cello Concerto with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Walton and Elgar Cello concertos in the Barbican Hall as well as appearing as soloist with the City of London Sinfonia. He has also performed the Brahms Double Concerto with Daniel Stabrawa and the Poznań Philharmonic in Poland and Elgar’s Cello Concerto at the Sibelius International Music Festival in Helsinki.

Bartholomew is also a sought-after chamber musician and his recent musical collaborators have included Anthony Marwood, Christian Tetzlaff, Alina Ibragimova and András Keller. He frequently appears with the award winning Doric String Quartet with whom he recorded Eric Wolfgang Korngold’s string sextet for the Chandos label.

In 2011 at the age of twenty-six, Bartholomew LaFollette was appointed Principal Cello Teacher at the distinguished Yehudi Menuhin School.

Bartholomew plays on an especially fine example of a Giovanni Dollenz cello from 1841 and a bow by François Xavier Tourte from 1790. He is deeply grateful to the Stradivari Trust for making this possible.