Felix Klieser & Zemlinsky Quartet
Biography Felix Klieser & Zemlinsky Quartet
Felix Klieser
is an exceptional artist in several aspects. At the age of 5, he took his first horn lessons, at the age of 13 he enrolled as a junior student at the University of Music and Theater in Hannover. In 2014 Felix Klieser was awarded the ECHO Classic prize in the category best young artist and published an autobiographical book about his fascinating life story. In 2016 he received the prestigious Leonard Bernstein Award of the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival.
Highlights of the 2021/2022 season are the beginning of Felix Klieser’s two-year residency with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and his US debut as part of an extensive tour with the Basel Chamber Orchestra and tenor Ian Bostridge in spring 2022. Among others Felix Klieser will be performing with the London Mozart Players at the Enescu Festival in Bucharest and with the Festival Strings Lucerne in the Munich Prinzregententheater. Other highlights of the season are appearances at music festivals such as the Gezeitenkonzert, the Staufener Musikwoche and the Moselmusik festival. Felix Klieser will present his current album Beyond Words with transcriptions of baroque vocal works in several concerts with the CHAARTS Chamber Artists before his new recording with the Zemlinsky Quartet will be released on the Berlin Classics label in early 2022. In December he will be the soloist at this year’s Audi Christmas Concert in Ingolstadt.
In exciting chamber music projects, the young horn player will appear in various line-ups at the Brahmstage Baden-Baden, the Beethovenhaus Bonn, the Schubertiade Hohenems, the Dubrovnik Music Festival and the Heidelberger Frühling. His chamber music partners include the Danish String Quartet, Sebastian Manz, Andrej Bielow, Martina Filjak, Boris Kusnezow, Tanja Tetzlaff, Dag Jensen, Dominik Wagner and Klieser’s long-time piano partner Christof Keymer.
As a member of the project ensemble “The Impossible Orchestra” of the conductor Alondra de la Parra, Felix Klieser will play in the first edition of the Pax Festival in Mexico in the summer of 2022. The cast of the virtual orchestra created during the corona pandemic includes Rolando Villazón, Alisa Weilerstein, Edicson Ruiz, Albrecht Mayer and Maxim Vengerov. In Mexico, the musicians of the “Impossible Orchestra” can be seen live together for the first time after their digital success. The contemporary composer Rolf Martinsson is dedicating a horn concerto to Felix Klieser, which will be premiered and recorded with the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern in spring 2022.
In March 2019 Felix Klieser’s recording of the complete Mozart horn concertos with the Camerata Salzburg (with the label Berlin Classics) was released, represented in the Top 10 of the German classical music charts for 3 months. His debut album Reveries with works for horn and piano, which was released in 2013 and was awarded the ECHO-Klassik, was followed in 2015 by Horn Concertos, Klieser’s first orchestral CD with works by Mozart and the brothers’ Joseph and Michael Haydn, which he performed together with the Württembergisches Kammerorchester Heilbronn under the musical direction of Ruben Gazarian. In September 2017 he published his third CD Horn Trio, recorded with the violinist Andrej Bielow and the pianist Herbert Schuch at the Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR) in Munich, on which the horn player not only devotes himself to the profound trio for horn, violin and piano by Johannes Brahms but also to lesser-known works for this exciting line-up.
In the past season Felix Klieser already appeared as soloist with the Camerata Salzburg as well as the Mozarteumorchester Salzburg, the Fondazione Orchestra Sinfonica Milano Guiseppe Verdi (Milan), the Orquesta Filarmónica de Gran Canaria, the Festival Strings Lucerne, the Slovenska Filharmonija (Bratislava), the chamber orchestra of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Saarländisches Staatsorchester, the Magdeburgische Philharmonie and the Kammerakademie Potsdam. He has also made chamber music appearances at the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival, the Glocke Bremen, the Essener Philharmonie, the Beethovenhaus Bonn, the Tonhalle Düsseldorf, the Oxford Chamber Music Festival, the Gstaad Menuhin Festival and the Schleswig Holstein Music Festival.
From 2008 till 2011 he was a member of the National Youth Orchestra of Germany (Bundesjugendorchester), where he frequently performed at major venues such as Berlin Philharmonie, Beethovenhalle Bonn, Köln Philharmonie and Philharmonie am Gasteig Munich. He also participated in numerous productions by Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) and has undertaken tours to Austria, Switzerland, Italy and South Africa.
On social media, Klieser likes to let his audience participate in his everyday life as an artist and also take a look behind the scenes at concerts. His horn “Alex”, a model 103 from the Alexander Brothers (Mainz) leads a life of its own on Instagram and Facebook and can be seen cooking, reading and vacationing. Felix Klieser has been teaching his own horn class at the Münster University of Music since 2018. He regularly passes on his knowledge in master classes.
Zemlinsky Quartet
Founded in 1994 while the members were still students, the ZEMLINSKY QUARTET has become a much lauded example of the Czech string quartet tradition. The Zemlinsky Quartet won the First Grand Prize at the Bordeaux International String Quartet Competition in 2010. They have also been awarded top prizes at the Banff International String Quartet Competition (2007), Prague Spring International Music Competition (2005) and London International String Quartet Competition (2006), where they also received the Audience Prize. The Quartet was recipient of the Alexander Zemlinsky Advancement Award in 2008. Other notable prizes include Beethoven International Competition (1999), New Talent Bratislava (2003), Martinů Foundation String Quartet Competition (2004), and the Prize of Czech Chamber Music Society (2005). In the season 2016/17, Zemlinsky Quartet was appointed as the residential ensemble of the Czech Chamber Music Society.
While students at the Prague Conservatory and the Academy of Performing Arts Prague, the ensemble was coached by members of renowned Czech string quartets including the Talich, Prague, Kocian and Pražák Quartets. The ensemble also took part in several master classes including ProQuartet, in France and Sommerakademie in Reichenau, Austria where they were awarded First Prize for the best interpretation of a work by Janáček. From 2005 to 2008, the quartet studied with Walter Levin, the first violinist of LaSalle Quartet. Their recent mentor has been Josef Klusoň, the violist of the Pražák Quartet.
Zemlinsky Quartet is named after the Austrian composer, conductor and teacher Alexander Zemlinsky (1871-1942), whose enormous contribution to Czech, German and Jewish culture during his 16-year residence in Prague had been underrated until recently. His four string quartets (the second one being dedicated to his student and brother-in-law Arnold Schönberg) belong to the basic repertoire of the ensemble. Since 2005, the quartet has maintained a special relationship with the Alexander Zemlinsky Foundation in Vienna.
The Zemlinsky Quartet performs regularly in the Czech Republic and abroad (Germany, Switzerland, Austria, France, Monaco, Luxembourg, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Great Britain, Ireland, Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Canada, USA, Brazil, Japan, South Korea). Recent major appearances of the Zemlinsky Quartet include London’s Wigmore Hall, Cité de la Musique in Paris, Library of Congress, Place des Arts in Montreal, Prague Spring Festival, and their New York debut on Schneider/New School Concerts Series.
Their vast repertoire contains more than 200 works ranging from Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and Dvorak to works by contemporary composers. The members of the ensemble also perform as soloists and are individual prize-winners of several competitions (Concertino Praga, Spohr International Competition Weimar, Tribune of Young Artists UNESCO, Rotary Music Competition Nürnberg,Beethoven International Competition, Kocian International Competition).
Between 2006-2011, the Zemlinsky Quartet were Assistant Quartet-in-Residence at Musikakademie Basel in Switzerland. Music education is an important part of
their professional life and during their tours, the quartet is often invited to give master classes to students of any age. They also perform educational concerts for
students. Recently, František Souček and Petr Holman have been appointed Professors at the Prague Conservatory.
