Biography Stephen Waarts, Can Çakmur, Ivo Dudler, Camerata Schweiz & Howard Griffiths

Stephen Waarts, Can Çakmur, Ivo Dudler, Camerata Schweiz & Howard GriffithsStephen Waarts, Can Çakmur, Ivo Dudler, Camerata Schweiz & Howard GriffithsStephen Waarts, Can Çakmur, Ivo Dudler, Camerata Schweiz & Howard Griffiths

Stephen Waarts
Waarts’ innate and individual musical voice has established him as a firm favourite with audiences. With a voracious appetite for repertoire, he has already performed more than 30 standard violin concertos, as well as rarely performed works, and he is a passionate chamber musician.

During the 2019/20 season Stephen Waarts makes his recital debut at the Wigmore Hall, London, with pianist Gabriele Carcano and works by Fauré, Szymanowski and Bartók. He returns to the Auditorium du Louvre in Paris with a solo recital featuring Paganini, Bach and Ysaÿe, and further recitals and chamber concerts include Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw and Carnegie Hall in New York.

He works under Sir András Schiff twice this season: performing Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante with Timothy Ridout and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe as part of the Kronberg Academy Festival; and in Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. He also debuts with the Staatskapelle Weimar in Munich’s Philharmonie am Gasteig, BBCScottish Symphony Orchestra under Shi-Yeon Sung, Orpheum Supporters Orchestra at the Zurich Tonhalle Maag under Howard Griffiths, and Deutsche Streicherphilharmonie in the Dresden Philharmonie.

In 2019 he was awarded the International Classical Music Awards Orchestra Award by the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra and returns this season for a recital at the KKL Lucerne. Having won the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern’s soloists award in 2017 he returned there in both 2018 and 2019. He has also recently made his debuts at the Aspen Music Festival and Mostly Mozart Festival, New York, as well as with the Orchestre National de Belgique, Szczecin Philharmonic, Slovak Philharmonic and Cape Town Philharmonic.

In 2015 and 2017 Stephen Waarts was an active participant in the Kronberg Academy Festival, during which he took masterclasses with Mihaela Martin and Christian Tetzlaff. 2017 and 2019 he also performed at the Kronberg Academy Festival. In 2018 he took part in Chamber Music Connects the World. Since October 2016 he has been studying at Kronberg Academy with Mihaela Martin. These studies are funded by the Bubmann/Rühland Scholarship. Since March 2021 he is a fellow of Kronberg Academy.

Can Çakmur
The Turkish pianist Can Çakmur (*1997, pronunciation: Djahn Chakmur) grew up in Ankara. During his piano studies, his main teacher—the one who influenced him the most—was Emre Şen (*1973). 2012, while he was still at high school in Ankara, he was accepted to the Schola Cantorum de Paris, where he studied with Marcella Crudeli (*1940). He achieved the Diplôme de Virtuosité with highest honours in 2014. Since then, Can Çakmur has further expanded his experience and scope through encounters with notable musicians such as Alan Weiss (*1950), Arie Vardi (*1937), Claudio Martínez-Mehner (*1970), Leslie Howard (*1948), and Robert D. Levin (*1947).

Can Çakmur still continues his education—currently at the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt, Weimar, where he studies with Grigory Gruzman (*1956), while also working privately with Diane Andersen (*1934) in Belgium. As most pianists in his generation, Can Çakmur has participated in several competitions, with success: he was awarded the first prize at the 2017 Scottish International Piano Competition. In the following year he also received the top prize at the 10th Hamamatsu International Piano Competition (2018).

Howard Griffiths
was born in England and studied at the Royal Col- lege of Music in London. He has lived in Switzerland since 1981. From 1996 to 2006 Howard Griffiths was artistic director and chief con- ductor of the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, whose long and excellent tradition he successfully continued and developed extensively. This also included many tours in Europe, the USA and China. The public and the press reacted enthusiastically to this collaboration both in Switzerland and abroad.

From 2007 to 2018 Howard Griffiths was General Music Director of the Brandenburg State Orchestra in Frankfurt. His start to his first season was enthusiastically received in 2007 by the press: «Howard Griffiths immediately made it clear where the journey with him and the state orchestra will go: to lightness, ease and transparency... in addition to all the emotional intensity and expressive simplicity, subtleties and thematic developments suddenly became apparent... That makes us curious and excited about other Griffiths repertoire revelations.» (MOZ)

In addition, he has appeared as a guest conductor with many leading orchestras worldwide; these include the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra London, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchester National de France, the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra of Moscow Radio, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Symphony Orchestra Basel, and the London Mozart Players, the Orquesta Nacional de España, Taipei Symphony Orchestra, various radio orchestras in Germany (the orchestra of the NDR, the Radiophilharmonie Hannover, the Sinfonie- orchester des WDR, the hr-Sinfonieorchester, the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie), the Polish Chamber Orchestra and the English Chamber Orchestra and the Northern Sinfonia.

Howard Griffiths is also regularly involved in contemporary music. With the Collegium Novum Zurich, he directed the Swiss premiere of Hans Werner Henze‘s Requiem in the presence of the composer and worked closely with composers such as Sofia Gubaidulina, George Crumb, Arvo Pärt and Mauricio Kagel.

Howard Griffiths is always enthusiastic about new, unusual projects: with the Basel Symphony Orchestra he perfor- med Gustav Mahler‘s 8th Symphony, the «Symphony of a Thousand», with over a thousand participants; Together with the Zurich Chamber Orchestra (ZKO), successful crossover projects have been created with Giora Feidman, Roby Lakatos, Burhan Öcal or Abdullah Ibrahim; with great success he also conducted the original music for films by Charles Chaplin live with the ZKO for film projection on a big screen.

More than a hundred and fifty CD recordings on various labels (Warner, Universal, cpo, Sony, Koch and others) testify to Howard Griffiths’ broad artistic spectrum. For example, they contain works by contemporary Swiss and Turkish composers as well as first recordings of rediscovered music from the 18th and 19th centuries. This also includes more than 40 symphonies by Beethoven‘s contemporaries and the early Romanesque. His recordings of all eight symphonies by Beethoven‘s student Ferdinand Ries have received great praise from critics worldwide. The readers of the English magazine «Classic CD» chose Griffiths’ recording of works by Gerald Finzi as «Classic CD of the Year» in this category. The recording of all four Brahms symphonies also received great praise: «... the result is an excitingly pulsating reproduction of the symphonies ... However, such flights of fancy are only possible with a sound body that makes music at the highest level and is based on trust with the conductor. Both apply to the excellent, highly motivated Brandenburg State Orchestra Frankfurt.» (Radioswissclassic)

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