Originally from South-West Germany, I found myself settling by the Baltic Sea in 2020, from where I’m leading a heterogenious and fulfilling life as chamber musician, soloist, orchestral player and educator: formerly teaching viola at the Hochschule für Musik “Hanns Eisler” Berlin for nearly ten years, I was appointed professor for string chamber music at the hmt Rostock in 2023.
Having grown up in a musical household, it is difficult to remember exactly when or how my musical education, or my love for the music of W. A. Mozart started – I learned playing the piano with my mother and started receiving violin lessons at the local (Mannheim) music school when I turned 5. I do remember wanting to exchange the violin for the viola shortly before my 9th birthday, and to this day, never get tired of exploring the sound world that this somewhat complicated instrument offers. One other aspect of having chosen the viola is playing an extremely versatile role in chamber music – a fun challenge that might not be obvious at first and certainly doesn’t correspond to the stereotype of a viola player!
In my twenties, I was able to be part of the last decade of the era Claudio Abbado, whilst still studying viola in Freiburg with Wolfram Christ and later in Berlin with Tabea Zimmermann. Also overlapping with this, I have been extensively participating in the Spira mirabilis since its foundation in 2007, it remaining a project very close to my heart to the present day. Following seven years as a full member at the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, I accepted a position at the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in 2016 and kept the position until 2021.
My musical path allowed me to find musical and personal inspiration and gaining invaluable experience at very different ends and from very different personalities. The music of Mozart always had a prominent place on this path, and gradually I have been delving more and more into period-instrument-playing. What came out of studious curiosity, became a ground-stone of how I read, perceive and teach music nowadays.
Imagine how lucky I feel to be able to occasionally get together with some of my closest friends and like-minded musicians, in order to work on Mozart’s string quintets on period instruments: it doesn’t get much better than that - only different.