Biographies

A regular performer at international music festivals

such as the Beethoven Festival in Bonn, the Heidelberger Frühling Festival, the Schleswig Holstein Music Festival and the Mahler Festival in Toblach. She is active as a soloist, a chamber musician and accompanist, and teaches at the Hanover College of Music and Drama. Friedrich Fischer-Dieskau commissioned her to accompany his master classes in Sankt Paul in 2004 and 2005. She has given master classes in China, and was invited by the Barenboim-Said-Foundation in 2006 to teach in Ramallah, Jerusalem and other cities in Palestine and Israel. Katharina Sellheim won a scholarship from the German National Academic Foundation, the Richard Wagner Association, and numerous scholarships from the German Academic Exhange Service (DAAD). She won first prize in the Gedok Music Competition and studied in Hanover with Karl-Heinz Kämmerling and Markus Becker, and in Paris with Germaine Mounier.

1. Concertmaster with the Lower Saxony State Orchestra, Hanover

From 2006-2010 she was First Concertmaster with the Essen Philharmonic Orchestra. During her studies in Rostock with Prof. Petru Munteanu, and in Graz with Prof. Silvia Marcovici she received additional musical influences from artistic collaborations with Ida Haendel, Shlomo Mintz, Stefan Gheorghiu and the pianist Chia Chou. Lucja Madziar won the international violin competition “Kloster Schöntal” in Germany, and the Vaclav Huml competition in Croatia, and was a prize winner of the Fritz Kreisler competition in Vienna. In 1999 she was awarded the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) prize for extraordinary achievement, and in 2010 she was awarded the renowned Aalto-Stage Prize for young artists. As a soloist and chamber musician she has performed in venues such as the Alfred-Krupp-Hall at the Essen Philharmonic, the Laeiszhalle in Hamburg, the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory and in the Schubert- and Great Hall of the Vienna Concert Hall. Lucja Madziar plays a Carlo Landolfi violin from 1759.

Principal Cellist with the Lower Saxony State Orchestra Hanover

Christine Balke has performed as a soloist with various orchestras, including the Lower Saxony State Orchestra where she played Shostakovich´s Cello Concerto No.1, and Tchaikovsky´s Rococo-Variations as part of a ballet production. She won the Schumann Cello Concerto competition at Indiana University in Bloomington, USA, and received the Masefield Scholarship and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) scholarship. Christine Balke graduated from her studies with distinction. She studied with Peter Buck (Melos Quartet), Boris Pergamenschikow and Wolfgang Mehlhorn in Stuttgart, Cologne and Hamburg, and with Janos Starker at Indiana University in Bloomington, USA. Other musical influences have come from Arto Noras, Czaba Onczay, Zara Nelsowa and David Geringas.