Matthias Goerne & Andreas Haefliger
Biography Matthias Goerne & Andreas Haefliger
Matthias Goerne
is one of the most internationally sought-after vocalists and a frequent guest at renowned festivals and concert halls. He has collaborated with leading orchestras all over the world. Conductors of the first rank as well as eminent pianists are among his musical partners.
Since his opera début at the Salzburg Festival in 1997 (Papageno), Matthias Goerne has appeared on the world’s principal opera stages, including the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; Teatro Real, Madrid; Paris National Opera; Vienna State Opera; and the Metropolitan Opera, New York. His carefully chosen roles range from Wolfram, Amfortas, Kurwenal and Orest right up to the title roles in Alban Berg’s Wozzeck, Bartók’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, Paul Hindemithʼs Mathis der Maler and Aribert Reimann’s Lear.
Goerne’s artistry has been documented on numerous recordings, many of which have received prestigious awards. He is currently recording a series of selected Schubert songs (The Goerne/Schubert Edition – 11 CDs) for Harmonia Mundi.
From 2001 through 2005 Matthias Goerne taught as an honorary professor of song interpretation at the Robert Schumann Academy of Music in Düsseldorf. In 2001, he was appointed an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music in London. Born in Weimar, he studied with Hans-Joachim Beyer in Leipzig, and with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.
Highlights of the 2011/12 season included a tour with the Vienna Philharmonic, appearances at the Vienna State Opera and the Saito Kinen Festival (Bluebeard with Seiji Ozawa) and song recitals with Christoph Eschenbach and Leif Ove Andsnes in Paris, Vienna and New York (Carnegie Hall).
In 2012/13, Matthias Goerne sings Wolfram at the Bavarian State Opera and Amfortas in concert with the Teatro Real in Madrid. Concert highlights include appearances with the Orchestre de Paris (Bluebeard), Berlin Philharmonic (War Requiem), Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra (Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony), Filarmonica del Teatro alla Scala (Mahler Lieder) and San Francisco Symphony (Wagner arias) as well as song recitals with Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Schubert cycles with Christoph Eschenbach at the Vienna Musikverein.
Andreas Haefliger
was born into a distinguished Swiss musical family and grew up in Germany, going on to study at the Juilliard School in New York. With his formidable technique and musicality, and his innate sense of architecture and phrasing, he was quickly recognised as a pianist of the first rank. Engagements with major US orchestras followed swiftly – the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Pittsburgh, Chicago and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestras among them.
In his native Europe too, Haefliger was invited to the great orchestras and festivals – such as the Royal Concertgebouw, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Orchestre de Paris, London Symphony Orchestra and Vienna Symphony. He also established himself as a superb recitalist, making his New York debut in 1988, and became frequent performer at premier recital venues and festivals around the world, notably the Lucerne and Salzburg Festivals, the BBC Proms and the Wiener Festwochen.
In August 2013 he made a belated debut appearance at the Edinburgh Festival in their Queen’s Hall recital series, playing Beethoven’s Hammerklavier sonata and late Schubert to a packed out and enthusiastic audience. In the coming months he plays solo and duo recitals with Matthias Goerne in Tokyo (Kioi Hall and Musashino) and at the Wigmore Hall; he will give the world premiere of a new piano concerto by a major composer (details to be released Spring 2014); and performs both Ravel concerti in London and Antwerp with the Brussels Philharmonic and their Music Director Michel Tabachnik. Last season’s highlights included Mozart with the Orchestre de Paris and Paavo Järvi at the Salle Pleyel and on tour to Zurich, Geneva, Berne and Lucerne; Bartók Piano Concerto No.3 in Madrid, and Beethoven Piano Concerto No.1 with the National Symphony in Washington and Jaap van Zweden.
The focus of Haefliger’s solo recital appearances in recent years has been an ongoing series Perspectives in which he performs the complete piano works of Beethoven alongside works by other composers including Mozart, Schubert, Bartók, Brahms, Janáček, Schoenberg and Ligeti. The recital programmes have all been recorded for the Avie label, to widespread critical acclaim. Haefliger will play a number of recitals on this theme in the coming years at the Wigmore Hall, the next being in April 2014, and other leading venues. In Autumn 2012 he took Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata to NCPA Beijing and Shanghai Concert Hall, and returns to NCPA in November 2013 with a solo recital of Berio and Beethoven.
Haefliger is also much sought-after as a chamber musician. Amongst his regular collaborators over the years have been Matthias Goerne, with whom he released Schubert songs on Harmonia Mundi in 2013 to critical acclaim and will peform with at the Wigmore Hall in September 2013. Haefliger also works frequently with the Takacs Quartet, with whom he recently played at the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York; and his wife the distinguished flautist Marina Piccinini with whom he played at the Hong Kong Chamber Music Festival last season.
After the enormous success of his first recording of Mozart Sonatas for Sony Classical, Haefliger made three further recordings for Sony of Schumann’s Davidsbündlertanze and Fantasiestücke, Schubert Impromptus, and a disc of music by Sofia Gubaidulina. Later Haefliger recorded for Decca with the Takacs Quartet and Matthias Goerne, winning the Preis Der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik for his Schubert disc of Goethe’s songs with Goerne. Haefliger’s latest releases are more Schubert songs with Goerne, this time on Harmonia Mundi (released December 2012), and volume V of his solo recital series “Perspectives” on Avie – Liszt and Beethoven – released in December 2011.
