Sebastian Manz
international soloist, chamber musician and solo clarinetist with the SWR Symphony Orchestra, had his big breakthrough with his sensational success at the ARD International Music Competition in Munich in September 2008. He wins not only first prize in the Clarinet category, which had not been awarded for forty years, but also the coveted Audience Prize and other special prizes. With his partner Martin Klett at the piano, he had also won the German Music Competition just a few months before. Since then, he was awarded thrice with the ECHO Classic Award for his outstanding album releases. For his recording A Bernstein Story from 2019 he received the OPUS Classic Award in October 2020.

In season 2020/2021 Sebastian Manz performs as a soloist with the Göttingen Symphony Orchestra, the Bochum Symphony Orchestra, the Hessian State Orchestra Wiesbaden and the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra. He is also invited to Japan by the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra as well as by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York, USA. As part of a new recording of Copland’s clarinet concerto (Berlin Classics), he will be touring with the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra Heilbronn and chief conductor Case Scaglione. On the chamber music field, he gives performances together with Robert Neumann, Felix Klieser, Martin Klett and Sebastian Studnitzky as well as with ensembles as the Boulanger Trio, the Danish String Quartet and the Armida Quartett among others. He will be playing at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg and several festivals as the prestigious festival Heidelberger Frühling, the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and the festival Musikalischer Sommer Ostfriesland. In Spring 2021 he is invited to the winter festival of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York.

Sebastian Manz demonstrates a unique talent for arranging and composing on his albums and at his concerts. His discography includes numerous awards underscoring Manz’ intuition for details and overarching concepts. The album A Bernstein Story, released in 2019 (Berlin Classics) as a collaboration with Sebastian Studnitzky, presents arrangements as well as original compositions of both musicians and is placed in between classical and jazz music. Manz’ new album with clarinet concertos from Carl Nielsen and Magnus Lindberg was released in the beginning of September 2020 on Berlin Classics and received enthusiastic reviews. For this recording, Magnus Lindberg conducts his clarinet concerto himself.

Being the grandson of the Russian violinist Boris Goldstein and the son of two pianists, born in Hanover in 1986, Manz’s musical roots are in his German-Russian family background. He begins singing in a boys’ choir at the age of six. He first learns the piano, which he plays very well, but soon concentrates on the clarinet after listening to Benny Goodman’s recording of Carl Maria von Weber’s E flat major Concerto, which fascinates him and awakes a longing for the instrument. Among his most important teachers and supporters are the acclaimed clarinetists Sabine Meyer and Rainer Wehle.

Herbert Schuch
The pianist Herbert Schuch has gained a reputation as being among the most interesting musicians of his generation with his strikingly conceived concert programmes and CD recordings. In 2013, he received the ECHO Klassik award for his recording of the piano concerto by Viktor Ullmann and Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with the WDR Sinfonieorchester conducted by Olari Elts. In 2014, he issued the fascinating solo CD “invocation” with works by Bach, Liszt, Messiaen, Murail and Ravel, which engages with the sound of bells. He could be heard with this programme in piano recitals at the Salzburg Festival and the Stuttgart Musikfest, and in the Frauenkirche in Dresden and the Philharmonie in Berlin, among other venues. A piano-duet CD with Gülru Ensari, featuring works by Brahms, Hindemith, Stravinsky and Özkan Manav, was issued in early 2017.

Herbert Schuch has worked with a number of renowned orchestras, including the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the NHK Symphony Orchestra, the Camerata Salzburg, the Residentie Orkest Den Haag, the Bamberg Symphony, the Dresden Philharmonic and the radio orchestras of hr, MDR, WDR, NDR Hannover and Danish Radio. He appears regularly as guest at festivals such as the Heidelberger Frühling, the Kissinger Sommer, the Rheingau Music Festival, the Ruhr Piano Festival and the Salzburg Festival. Among the conductors with whom he has enjoyed successful associations are Pierre Boulez, Andrey Boreyko, Douglas Boyd, Lawrence Foster, Eivind Gullberg Jensen, Jakub Hrusa, Jun Märkl, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Jonathan Nott, Markus Poschner, Michael Sanderling and Alexander Vedernikov.

Recently, Herbert Schuch played with the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra under Valery Gergiev in the Gasteig in Munich, with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin in the Berlin Philharmonie, with the Camerata Salzburg, with the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana and with the National Youth Orchestra of Germany on a European tour. He also made his début with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., at the Salzburg Easter Festival and at the Festival Radio France Occitanie Montpellier. In addition, he gave concerts with the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, the Dresden Philharmonic, the Festival Strings Lucerne and the RAI National Symphony Orchestra.

His schedule for the 17/18 season includes fresh invitations to play with the WDR Sinfonieorchester and the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, as well as his début in the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg. As a child, Herbert Schuch also played violin for 10 years and has been an enthusiastic chamber musician ever since. In the summer of 2017, he undertook a trio tour with violinist Julia Fischer and cellist Daniel Müller-Schott.

Herbert Schuch was born in Timișoara, Romania, in 1979. He had his first piano lessons in his native city, before his family moved to Germany in 1988, where he has lived since. He continued his musical studies with Kurt Hantsch and then with Prof. Karl-Heinz Kämmerling at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. Recently, Herbert Schuch has been especially influenced by his encounters and work with Alfred Brendel. He created an international stir when he won three major competitions in just one year: the Casagrande Competition, the London International Piano Competition and the International Beethoven Competition in Vienna.

In addition to his performance activities, Herbert Schuch is also involved in the organization “Rhapsody in School,” founded by Lars Vogt, which promotes classical music education in schools.