Teaching Dates
August 12 - 21
Teaching Languages
English, German, Spanish,
Russian
Born in Gorky, Russia, the cellist, singer and conductor Emil Rovner has established himself as a compelling musician, commanding ‘flawless technical mastery’ (FonoForum) and expressive depth, as well as being a sought-after teacher and festival leader.
Emil Rovner´s most recent projects include solo perfomances with the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra (Dvorak concerto), the Corean Chamber Orchestra in Seoul, the Sinfonietta Cracovia, the Presidential Symphony Orchestrea of Ankara, a Debut at the Shostakovitch Festival in Gohrisch with a world premiere of a new piece by Sofia Gubaidulina, a World Premiere of the “Kyrie in memory of Boris Nemtsov” by Evgeny Shcherbakov as well as concert performances in Prades (Casals Festival), Bonn (Beethoven Fest), Hamburg (Elbphilharmonie), Luzern (KKL), Gstaad (Menuhin Festival), Copenhagen (Tivoli Concert Hall) etc..
Emil Rovner was born in Gorky, Russia in a family of musicians, where he began taking cello lessons with Anatoly Lukianenko at the Glinka Conservatory. By the age of ten he had already given his solo début with the Gorky City Symphony. He continued his studies with Ivan Monighetti in Madrid and Basle and completed them with Boris Pergamenschikow at the Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin, where he took his performance degree. He also received lessons from Mstislav Rostropovich who has had a strong impact on his artistic development.
He studied singing with U. Messthaler at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis and took lessons in conducting from M. Samorukova.
He has worked closely with such leading contemporary composers as Sofia Gubaidulina, Valentin Silvestrov, Heinz Holliger, Per Nørgård, Bernd Franke,Tigran Mansurian, Elena Firsova a.o.
Emil Rovner has won many prizes at international cello competitions, including a First Prize at the Johannes Brahms Competition in Austria as well as at the Lausanne Competition under the patronage of Lord Menuhin. In 1998 he won the First Prize and two special awards at the J. S. Bach Competition in Leipzig, marking the onset of his international concert career.
Recommended by Vladimir Ashkenazy, Emil Rovner gave his solo début with the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra under Gary Bertini. Since then he has frequently appeared as a soloist with orchestras of the stature of the St Petersburg Philharmonic, the Berlin Symphony, the Bern Camerata, the Moscow Symphony, the Basle Symphony, and the renowned chamber orchestras of Stuttgart, Basle and Munich among others. He has played in such renowned venues as the Berlin Philharmonie, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Berlin Konzerthaus, the Bonn Beethovenhaus, Queen Elisabeth Hall (London), the St Petersburg Philharmonie and the Zurich Tonhalle and at such festivals as the Berlin Festival, the Leipzig Bach Festival, the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, Gidon Kremer’s Les muséiques and the Viva Cello Festival in Basle.
Emil Rovner played the German première of Boris Tschaikowsky’s Cello Concerto in the Great Hall of the Berlin Philharmonie and gave his début at Lucerne Festival. He is co-founder and artistic director of the Resonanzen Festival in St Moritz and the Mieczyslaw Weinberg Festival in Dresden.
A passionate chamber musician, Emil Rovner performs with artist like Pavel Gililov, Itamar Golan, Martin Helmchen, Alla Ivanzhina, Ana Chumachenko, Patrick Gallois, Michel Lethiec and Sol Gabetta.
In October 2007 he became one of the youngest professors at the Carl Maria von Weber University of Music in Dresden. He holds international master-classes and is jury member at international cello competitions like Prague Spring competition and Janacek competition. Many of his students have won prizes at international cello and chamber music competitions. His CD release of the solo works by Mieczyslaw Weinberg in 2010 (a première recording) got five stars by the classical music magazine FonoForum and was nominated for the Echo Classic Prize.
Emil Rovner plays a cello built by the Franco-Israeli violinmaker Yair Hod Fainas (Paris, 2012) and a cello made by Thorsten Theis (Germany, 2014)
Teaching Dates
August 12 - 16
Teaching Languages
English, German, French
The cellist Katharina Deserno, born in Frankfurt/Main, is famous for her wide repertoire and her exciting concert programming as well as for her sensitive and expressive playing. Her international concert activities include appearances as a soloist i.a. with the Spanish National Orchestra, and as a chamber musician. Katharina performs as part of a duo with Serbian pianist Nenad Lečić, since more than 15 years. Her artistic work encompasses numerous world premieres of compositions written for her; concert tours and festival invitations, radio broadcasts at WDR, Deutschlandfunk, Radio Clasica, ORF i.a. and CD-productions. Reviewers outline her “perfect playing” and “perfection of technique” (Rondo Magazine).
On her debut CD “Hommage à Clara Schumann” (2011), she presented music for cello and piano and for cello solo by women composers; on subsequent albums for KALEIDOS and WERGO she has recorded music by Sergei Rachmaninov, Alexander Grechaninov, Konrad Lang and Ludwig van Beethoven, as well as chamber music by Barbara Heller. All recordings include world-premieres and have been praised highly by the press. On her CD which was released in 2019, she presented a solo program with music by Johann Sebastian Bach and Violeta Dinescu : Her interpretation of the Bach suites was identical as "masterly" (Das Orchester). First reviews write about a “an impressing recording”, “enthralling interpretation” and “an extraordinary, touching CD” (pizzicato, Musenblätter).
There will be one more CD released soon with solo music by Dinescu (Kaleidos).
Katharina Deserno received her artistic education in Frankfurt, Paris and Cologne from Maria Kliegel, Gerhard Mantel and Philipp Muller; further inspiration and artistic impulses came i.a. from Janos Starker, Siegfried Palm, Wolfgang Boettcher, György Kurtág, José Luís de Delás, and Rainer Zipperling for baroque cello. Already during her studies she became an assistant to Maria Kliegel. Being one of the youngest teachers at the Cologne University of Music and Dance, she established her own cello class in 2008. Meanwhile, many of her students are prizewinners of international and national competitions. Katharina is regularly invited to give master classes for young cellists. Her book on the history of women cellists was published in 2018 by Böhlau publishers. Her teaching book for young cellists, published by Schott, was a sheet music top seller for several years.
In 2015, Katharina Deserno became professor at Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts. She is artistic director of Yehudi Menuhin Live Music Now Frankfurt. In 2022 Summer, she was appointed as a substitute professor at University of Music Mainz, Germany.
Katharina Deserno plays an Italian Violoncello by Carlo Antonio Testore from 1712 which has been generously loaned to her by a German Maecenas.
Teaching Dates
August 17 - 21
Teaching Languages
English, German, Fernch,
Spanish, Italian, Latvian
Born into a musical family in Riga, Latvia in 1962, he immigrated to Israel with his family in 1971 before coming to Germany in 1974. Ramón Jaffé received his first musical tuition under his father Don Jaffe, who guided him until his concert exam in 1988 with B. Peragamenschikow. In addition to his tutelage under D. Geringas, D. Shafran and S. Vegh served as his musical mentors. As chamber music partner, he accompanied Sandor Vegh in his last great appearance as a violinist in the great Mozarteum Hall in Salzburg.
Ramón Jaffé, under this master‘s aegis, took successfully part in a series of competitions such as the German Musical Competition (1984) and the Casals Competition in Budapest (1985). His solo career, which had commenced during his studies, led him to the prestigious concert houses of Berlin, Leipzig, Amsterdam, Vienna, Salzburg, Munich, London, and Cologne, St.-Petersburg, Rio de Janeiro, to name a few. While doing this, he devoted himself to chamber music as a member of the string trio ,,Belcanto Strings“ (1993 – 2009) and the ,,Mendelssohn Trio Berlin“. Further chamber music partners have included, among others, I. Vermillion, Y. Bronfman, A. Mustonen, A. Frölich, F. Leleux, V. Mendelssohn, J. Rachlin, W. Fuchs, M.P. Langlamet, B. Schmid, E. Bashkirowa, G. Causse, and N. Znaider.
In addition, Mr. Jaffé is the founder and artistic manager of the Chamber Music Festival Hopfgarten/Tirol. In 2011 he has accepted the invitation to the artistic leadership of the Chamber Music Festival in Middelburg/NL which he led until 2019. In 2020 he has founded the Kammermusikfest Oberlausitz in Saxonia/Germany.
The orchestras with which Ramón Jaffé has worked, include the DSO & BSO Berlin, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Berliner Symphoniker, Hamburger Symphoniker, Camerata Academica Salzburg, Radio SO Vienna, Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, the Armenian Philharmonic, the Stuttgart Philharmonic, Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfonica do Brazil.
A sampling of the conductors, with whom he has worked includes A. Boreyko, A. Mustonen, M. Jurowski, E. Topchjan, St. Blunier, Ralf Weikert, as well as the jazz singer Bobbie McFerrin.
He appeared with the Bavarian Radio Orchestra under the conductorship of R. Abbado, M. Viotti and L. Foster, and the RSO Vienna in the Vienna Musikverein within the Wiener Festwochen. This performance was frequently broadcast internationally via radio and television. Numerous other T.V. and radio recordings as well as an impressive number of CDs document his artistic work. ,,Meditation hebraique“, Brahms Arrangements (published by Koch Schwann), and the premiere of B. Blacher‘s Cello Concerto (Signum) are examples of this. Among the newest releases one can find “The cello’s opera voice” with original pieces for Cello & Orchestra by Verdi, Rossini, Weber, Auber and R. & J. Strauss and Dvoráks Cello concerto No. 1 in A Major.
Ramón Jaffé was a welcomed guest at international festivals, such as the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, the Rheingau Festival, the Würzburg Mozart Festival, Open Chamber Music Prussia Cove (GB), D. Oistrakh-Festival (Estonia), Schubertiade Roskilde (DK), Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival, Stuttgarter Bachtage, Steirischer Herbst Graz, the Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival (Finland), the Jerusalem Chamber Music Festival, Salzburg Culture Weeks, the Expo 1992 and the Biennial in Seville, the Middelburg Festival (NL), the MIDEM in Cannes, Amadeo (NL), Summertime (LV) and the Ludwigsburg Festival.
One of his most artistically exciting and impressive encounters was that with the late Flamenco guitarist Pedro Bacan. Bacan introduced Ramón Jaffé to the secrets of the fascinating world of Flamenco. Their performances have culminated at all the significant Flamenco Festivals in Spain and France. In 2006 Ramón Jaffé has founded the RamonJaffé-Trio (cello, flamenco-guitar & flamenco-dance), which is specialized on the connection of spanish classical music with the flamenco. He is also constantly performing with the Sri Lankan Sitar-virtuoso Pradeep Ratnayake.
Ramón Jaffé is teaching at the University of Music “C. M. v. Weber” in Dresden. In addition he is leading worldwide masterclasses and is jury-member of several competitions.