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.

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.

Marie-Elisabeth Hecker attended the Robert Schumann Conservatory in Zwickau before the distinguished German cellist Peter Bruns became her principal teacher. She continued her studies with Heinrich Schiff and subsequently took part in masterclasses with eminent figures such as Anner Bylsma, Bernard Greenhouse, Frans Helmerson, Gary Hoffman, and Steven Isserlis. In 2001, she won the Special Prize at the Dotzauer Competition for Young Cellists in Dresden, as well as the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Prize in 2009.
She made her international breakthrough with her sensational success at the 8th Rostropovich Competition in Paris in 2005, where she became the first contestant in the event's history to win first prize as well as two special prizes. She has been a guest with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Dresden Philharmonie, the Filarmonica della Scala (Milan), the Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig, Frankfurt HR Radio Symphony Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Mariinsky Orchestra in Saint Petersburg, the Orchestre de Paris, the Orchestre National de France, the Berlin Staatskapelle, and the Wiener Symphoniker – under the baton of eminent conductors including Daniel Barenboim, Daniel Harding, Thomas Hengelbrock, Philippe Herreweghe, Marek Janowski, Fabio Luisi, Kent Nagano, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Christian Thielemann, and Christoph von Dohnányi. Especially with her husband, the pianist Martin Helmchen, she appears in recitals all over the world. She also regularly performs chamber music concerts in various formations with Veronika Eberle, Christian Tetzlaff, Stephen Waarts, Carolin Widmann, and the Apollon Musagète Quartet.
Marie-Elisabeth Hecker was appointed a professor at Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber in Dresden in August 2017. In cooperation with Music Road Rwanda, she regularly travels to Rwanda in order to support a local music school with concerts and educational projects. Marie-Elisabeth Hecker is supported by the Kronberg Academy. 2022 was the year of her début performance at the Ruhr Piano Festival.