Christiane Karg, Benjamin Bruns, Tareq Nazmi, MDR Leipzig Radio Choir, Dresdner Philharmonie & Marek Janowski
Biography Christiane Karg, Benjamin Bruns, Tareq Nazmi, MDR Leipzig Radio Choir, Dresdner Philharmonie & Marek Janowski
Christiane Karg
Born in Feuchtwangen, Bavaria, Christiane Karg studied singing at the Salzburg Mozarteum with Heiner Hopfner and Wolfgang Holzmair, where she was awarded the Lilli Lehmann Medal. While still a student she made her debut at the Salzburg Festival and has been a welcome guest ever since, last seen as Pamina in a new production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte in 2018.
After a first engagement in the opera studio of the Hamburg State Opera she joined the ensemble of the Frankfurt Opera. Today, she can be heard worldwide with the great roles of her repertoire: in London at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden as Pamina, at the Lyric Opera Chicago and at the Met in New York as Susanna, at La Scala in Milan as Sophie and Euridice, at the Vienna State Opera as Mélisande (Pelléas et Mélisande) and at the Hamburg State Opera as Pamina, Mélisande and Daphne. New in the repertoire: the Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, Micaëla in a new production of Carmen at the Berlin State Opera under Daniel Barenboim and the Contessa in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, among others, in Hamburg and at Salzburg’s Mozart Week 2020. In the Autumn 2020, she would have returned to the Metropolitan Opera as Mozart’s Pamina, an engagement made impossibly due to the worldwide outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Christiane Karg is also in demand internationally for concert roles. Her musical partners include conductors such as Ivor Bolton, Herbert Blomstedt, Christoph Eschenbach, Andrés Orozco-Estrada, Daniel Harding, Thomas Hengelbrock, Manfred Honeck, Marek Janowski, Andrew Manze, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Christian Thielemann. She works with important orchestras such as the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonic, NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester, Staatskapelle Dresden, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Bamberg and Vienna Symphony Orchestra as well as the Munich Philharmonic. Projects of the current season include a tour with Lieder and concert arias by Mozart under the direction of Leif Ove Andsnes and with members of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under Andris Nelsons, Ravel's Shéhérazade with the Orchester de la Suisse Romande under Jonathan Nott, a tour with Mahler's Fourth Symphony and concert performances of Wagner’s Das Rheingold with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra under Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Mahler's Rückert-Lieder with the NDR under Petr Popelka, selected songs from “Des Knaben Wunderhorn” with the Basel Symphony Orchestra under Ivor Bolton.
Christiane Karg is a distinguished recitalist and regularly appears at the Schubertiade in Hohenems/Schwarzenberg, at London’s Wigmore Hall (where she was Artist in Residence in 2019/2020) and at all great festivals. The current season will see her giving recitals at London’s Wigmore Hall, in Stuttgart, Feuchtwangen and Santiago de Compostela. In addition to her numerous engagements, Christiane Karg, as artistic director of the festival KunstKlang, conceives and is responsible for her own concert series in her hometown Feuchtwangen and is very committed to her project "be part of it! - Musik für Alle" project to promote music education for children and young people. For her merits, the artist was awarded the Bavarian Culture Award in the art category and recently the Brahms Prize of the Brahms Society Schleswig-Holstein e.V.
In spring 2017, Christiane Karg’s solo recording Parfum with settings of poems by Charles Baudelaire, Leconte de Lisle, Paul Verlaine, Tristan Klingsor and Victor Hugo was released with Berlin Classic and has won high acclaim by the press. She also received the coveted Echo Klassik award for her recording of Le nozze di Figaro under Yannick Nézet-Séguin in the category Opera Recording of the Year. In addition to this award, her recording Scene!, together with the Baroque ensemble Arcangelo under Jonathan Cohen, as well as her first Lied recording Verwandlung – Lieder eines Jahres was honoured in the category Soloist Recording. Her recordings Amoretti with arias by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Christoph Willibald Gluck and André Grétry, as well as Heimliche Aufforderung with songs by Richard Strauss are also available on Berlin Classic. Her most recent new release is Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 and Choral Fantasy with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra under Pablo Heras-Casado, released by Harmonia Mundi. Her most recent solo album “Erinnerung” featuring Lieder by Gustav Mahler has been released in Autumn 2020 with Harmonia Mundi.
Marek Janowski
first came to the Dresden Philharmonic as principal conductor from 2001 to 2003, during which time he already impressed with unusual and challenging programs. With the 2019/2020 concert season, he returned to the Dresden Philharmonic as principal conductor and artistic director.
Born in Warsaw in 1939, raised and educated in Germany, Marek Janowski looks back on an extensive and successful career both as an opera conductor and as artistic director of major concert orchestras. After years as assistant conductor and conductor in Aachen, Cologne, Düsseldorf and Hamburg, his artistic path led him to Freiburg i. Br. and Dortmund as GMD. Between the Metropolitan Opera in New York and the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, between Chicago, San Francisco, Hamburg, Vienna, Berlin and Paris, there is no opera house of world renown at which he has not been a regular guest since the late 1970s.
In concert, on which he has concentrated since the late 1990s, he continues the great German conducting tradition. From 2002 to 2016, he was principal conductor of the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin (RSB). Prior to that, and partly in parallel, he served as chief conductor of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (2005-2012), the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo (2000-2005), and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France (1984-2000), among others, which he developed into France's top orchestra. He was also chief conductor of the Gürzenich Orchestra in Cologne for several years (1986-1990).
Marek Janowski is known worldwide as an outstanding conductor of Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, Bruckner and Strauss, but also as an expert in the French repertoire. For more than 35 years, more than 50 recordings, most of which have won international awards - including several complete opera recordings and complete symphonic cycles - have contributed to making Marek Janowski's special abilities as a conductor known internationally.
A special focus for him is Richard Wagner's ten operas and music dramas, which he realized in concert with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, the Rundfunkchor Berlin and a phalanx of international soloists between 2010 and 2013 in the Berlin Philharmonie. All concerts were released on SACD by Pentatone in cooperation with Deutschlandradio. Marek Janowski also returned to an opera house once again for Wagner, conducting the "Ring" at the Bayreuth Festival in 2016 and 2017. He had already recorded this cycle for the disc with the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden from 1980 to 1983. For the years 2014 to 2017, he was invited by the NHK Symphony (the most important orchestra in Japan) to conduct Wagner's tetralogy in concert in Tokyo.
Under his direction, several recordings have already been made with the Dresden Philharmonic, such as the one-act operas "Cavalleria rusticana" and "Il Tabarro" by Mascagni and Puccini, as well as Beethoven's "Fidelio", also recorded by the Pentatone label.
