Piano Quartet
Conrad Muck (violin), Gregor Sigl (viola), LiLa (violoncello) Thomas Hoppe (piano)
Biografie, Audio/Video, Discography, Photos, Programs
Biography
Conrad Muck (violin) has performed both as soloist and chamber music partner with renowned performers on major concert stages worldwide. He has performed at such venues as the Berlin Philharmonie, Munich’s Herkulessaal, the Wigmore Hall, London, the Wiener Musikverein, the Auditorium du Louvre, Paris and New York City’s Carnegie Hall.
The Dresden-born violinist won several international competitions at the beginning of his career and during his studies in Germany, Conrad performed as a soloist with orchestras including the Dresden Staatskapelle, the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra and the Rundfunk Sinfonie-Orchester, Berlin.
Conrad was the leader of the Petersen Quartet from 1992 to 2009 and the quartet gave concerts in all the world’s important music centres. They recorded numerous award-winning discs for the Capriccio label including the Grand Prix de L’Academie Charles Gros, the German Record Critics’ Prize, Gramophon “Editor’s Choice”, Choc de l’année du Monde de la Musique and Echo-Klassik.
From 2015 to January 2018, Conrad led the Leipzig String Quartet with whom he gave numerous concerts every year and made regular recordings. Since October 2019, he has been a member of the Michelangelo Quartet alongside Mihaela Martin, Michael Barenboim and Frans Helmerson.
Conrad is regularly invited as a lecturer and to give masterclasses all over Europe, North America and Asia in educational institutions such as the Zurich University of Music, the Royal College of Music in London, theUniversities of Berkeley, Logan, Ann Arbor in the US, in Toronto and Tokyo as well as the Summer Academy of the University of Vienna and the Lac Leman Music Masterclasses. He appears regularly as a juror at international music competitions including the International String Quartet Competition “Premio Paolo Borciani” in Reggio Emilia, the chamber music competition “Vittorio Gui” in Florence, “Premio di Trieste”, and the German Music Competition in Bonn.
From 2013 to 2015 Conrad served as Professor of Violin and Chamber Music at Al Quds University in Jerusalem with regular chamber music and teaching activities in Hebron, Jericho and Ramallah.
Gregor Sigl (viola) is best known in the music world as a long-standing member of the Artemis Quartet, with whom he performed on virtually all internationally renowned concert stages until the ensemble’s current indefinite creative break. The numerous CD recordings of the Artemis Quartet for the Erato/Warner label, with which the ensemble has an exclusive contract, have been awarded multiple times with the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik, the Gramophone Award, and the Diapason d’Or, among others. The complete recording of Beethoven’s string quartets was honored in 2011 with the prestigious French Grand Prix de l’Académie Charles Cros and was selected for the newly released edition “Beethoven – The Complete Works” by Warner Classics for Ludwig van Beethoven’s 250th birthday. The quartet has been awarded the ECHO Klassik (later OPUS Klassik) four times, most recently for the recording of Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s works and for the album dedicated to their tragically deceased violist Friedemann Weigle featuring Brahms’ quartets op. 51/1 and op. 67. The album released in spring 2019, featuring works by Dmitri Shostakovich including the Piano Quintet op. 57 with Elisabeth Leonskaja, was again honored with the Diapason d’Or and the Prix Caecilia 2019. In May 2024, Erato/Warner released a collector’s edition of all CD productions by the Artemis Quartet from the years 1996-2018 on 23 CDs.
Before his successful career as a member of the Artemis Quartet, Gregor Sigl worked as a freelance soloist and chamber musician, as well as a guest concertmaster and music director with renowned orchestras such as the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa, the Camerata Salzburg, and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Since 2007, Gregor Sigl has held a professorship for chamber music at the University of the Arts in Berlin. From 2007 to 2022, he also held a professorship for chamber music at the Chapelle Musicale Reine Elisabeth in Brussels.”
LiLa (cello) is a multiple first prize winner at international competitions winning first prize at the Kobe Grand Prize at the 13th Osaka International Music Competition where she was also awarded for Best String Performance. Other first place awards include the 9th International “Antonio Janigro” Cello Competition, the Fulham International Music Competition in Paris and the International Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians in Moscow.
LiLa won second prize at the 43rd International Stulberg String Competition in Kalamazoo (USA) and has performed on many internationally at venues including the Verbier Festival, Arrezzo Youth Music Festival, Elmau Castle, Tsinandali Festival, Festspielhaus Baden Baden, Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, Moscow Tchaikovsky Concert Hall, Tonhalle Zurich and Suntory Hall, Tokyo. The orchestras and conductors with whom she been invited to work as soloist include the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Roma Sinfonietta, the Baden Baden Philharmonie, Moscow Virtuosi, the State Symphony Orchestra “New Russia”, Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra and Shanghai Opera Symphony Orchestra. She has collaborated with conductors including Valery Gergiev, Christoph Eschenbach, Heiko Mathias Förster, Vladimir Spivakov, Yury Tkachenko and Norichika Iimori.
As a chamber musician, LiLa has performed with Steven Isserlis, Gidon Kremer, David Geringas, Tabea Zimmermann and Antoine Tamestit, amongst others. LiLa’s recent highlights took her on an extensive tour of China (2022/23) with more than twenty concerts in the major cities throughout the country where she appeared as soloist with orchestras and as a chamber musician. In 2024, she gave her recital debut in Hamburg’s Laeiszhalle.
LiLa was born in Hangzhou, China in 2002 and began her musical training at the age of seven. In the early years, her teachers included Zhang Baojun and Cao Min. When she turned nine, she was accepted into the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and in 2016 she moved to the precollege department of the Juilliard School in New York where she studied with Richard L. Aaron and Sieun Lin. Since October 2018 she has been studying at the Kronberg Academy with Frans Helmerson and her studies were made possible by the Verena von der Groeben Patronage. LiLa plays a cello by Giovanni Grancino from 1690 which is on loan from the Beare’s International Violin Society.
Pianist Thomas Hoppe is considered one of the most outstanding duo partners of his generation and has partenered artists including Itzhak Perlman, Antje Weithaas, Tabea Zimmermann, Alban Gerhardt, Jens Peter Maintz and Frans Helmerson. Born in Germany in 1971, Thomas went to the USA as a student of Lee Luvisi and later completed his studies at the Juilliard School in New York City where he became the long-standing studio pianist for pedagogue, Dorothy DeLay and violinist, Itzhak Perlman.
Thomas performs worldwide with ensembles including the ATOS Trio with whom he has won many prizes
and awards. He also performs regularly with the “4.1 piano windtet”. In autumn 2019, the ATOS Trio released their complete recording of Beethoven’s Piano Trios as a project for the Wigmore Hall Live label in London. Concert appearances with various string quartets include the Shanghai Quartet, Modigliani Quartet, Mandelring Quartet and the Simply Quartet are recent highlights and Thomas has been working as a piano partner for international competitions for almost two decades. He performs at the Concours Reine Elisabeth in Brussels, the Joseph Joachim Violin Competition in Hanover, the Indianapolis Violin Competition in the US and the Singapore International Violin Competition
Thomas regularly gives masterclasses for piano accompaniment and chamber music in Europe, Australia, China and North and South America. Most recently he has worked as a Lecturer at the Zhuhai Violin Festival 2020 in China and as a jury member at the Trondheim Chamber Music Competition TICC 2019. In April 2018 he accepted an appointment at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen as Professor of piano chamber music.
Audio/Video
coming soon
Fotos
Program
Johannes Brahms
„Hungarian Dances“ (excerpts) arr. for Piano Quartet
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Piano Quartet in E flat major, K.493
Intermission
Johannes Brahms
Piano Quartet in g-minor, Op.25
(more programs on request)