Nicolas Altstaedt and José Gallardo

Program

German French cellist Nicolas Altstaedt is a versatile musician whose penetrating insights into new music led him to give the German premiere of Nico Muhly’s Cello Concerto in February 2014. He has also performed the music of Thomas Adès, Jörg Widmann, and Matthias Pintscher. Altstaedt and is joined by Argentinian pianist José Gallardo.

Program

Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
Sonata

Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979)
3 pieces

Fazil Say (b. 1970)
Sonata 

Intermission

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)
Sonata

About the Artists

Born in 1982 into a family of German and French descent, Nicolas Altstaedt was one of Boris Pergamenschikow’s last students in Berlin, where he has continued his studies with Eberhard Feltz.

He has won a number of prizes and awards, such as the 2004 Landgrave of Hesse Prize of the Kronberg Academy, first prize at the 2005 German Music Competition, the 2005 International Domnick Cello Competition, Stuttgart, and the 2006 Adam International Cello Competition, New Zealand, the 2010 Kulturstiftung Dortmund prize and the Credit Suisse Young Artist Award 2010. He is a BBC New Generation Artist 2010-2012, a member of the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society, and he received a Borletti Buitoni Fellowship in 2009.

Nicolas Altstaedt recently became the new artistic director of the Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival in 2012.

Highlights of past and upcoming seasons are concerts with the Tonhalle Orchestra, Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Czech Philharmonic, Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, the Tapiola Sinfonietta, Camerata Bern, Kremerata Baltica, the Simon Bolivar Orchestra, the Radio Symphony Orchestras Berlin, Stuttgart and Helsinki, the Melbourne- and New Zealand Symphony Orchestras, Bamberger Symphoniker, the Munich, Zurich and Stuttgart chamber orchestras and the Haydn Philharmonie Austria/Hungary. He performs under the baton of David Zinman, Vladimir Fedoseyev, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Neeme Järvi, Sir Neville Marriner, Sir Roger Norrington, Sir Andrew Davis, Mario Venzago, Andrej Boreyko, Adam Fischer, Dennis Russell Davies and Alexander Shelley.

He feels a deep commitment to contemporary music and performs with the composers Thomas Ades, Jörg Widmann, Matthias Pintscher, Fazil Say, Sofia Gubaidulina and Moritz Eggert. He has performed the Double concerto by György Kurtág at the composers’ 85th birthday concert 2011 in Budapest, played the Swiss premiere of G.F. Haas Cello concerto and played Wolfgang Rihm’s Cello Concerto “Versuchung” for the composers’ 60th birthday. Commissions by Fazil Say, Thomas Larcher and Raphael Merlin had been premiered 2012 in the Concertgebouw Amsterdam amongst others.

He appears in concert around the globe with such artists as Gidon Kremer, Yuri Bashmet, Daniel Hope, Leif Ove Andsnes, the Sasha Waltz dance company and is a regular guest at festivals such as Jerusalem, Kaposvar, Salzburg Summer and Salzburg Mozart Festival. His current chamber music partners are Alexander Lonquich, Barnabás Kelemen, Pekka Kuusisto, Antoine Tamestit, Jonathan Cohen and the Quatuor Ebene.

A native of Buenos Aires, José Gallardo started piano lessons at the age of five, at first at the Conservatory in Buenos Aires, later continuing his studies with Poldi Mildner in the Faculty of Music at the University of Mainz, where he completed his diploma in 1997. His musical inspiration came from such artists as Menahem Pressler, Alfonso Montecino, Karl-Heinz Kämmerling, Sergiu Celibidache, Rosalyn Tureck and Bernard Greenhouse. José Gallardo has won many national and international awards. Invitations followed for numerous tours and festivals in Lockenhaus, Asiago, Ludwigsburg, Schwetzingen, Kronberg, Rheingau and elsewhere. He has collaborated in chamber music with other musicians in Europe, Asia, Israel, Oceania and South America, among them Alberto Lysy, Gidon Kremer, Linus Roth, Barnabás Kélemen, Chen Zimbalista, Julius Berger, Miklós Perényi, Danjulo Ishizaka and Nicolas Altstaedt. From 1998 to 2008 he taught in the Faculty of Music at the University of Mainza and since autumn 2008 has been teaching at the Leopold Mozart Centre at the University of Augsburg.

Watch and Listen

Nicolas Altstaedt performs the Courante from Bach’s Cello Suite No.5 in C minor, BWV 1011.