GRUNAU & PAULUS MUSIC MANAGEMENT - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Professor at Berlin University
Jens Peter Maintz has an outstanding reputation as a versatile soloist, highly sought-after chamber musician, and committed cello teacher.
Originally from Hamburg, he studied with David Geringas and took part in masterclasses with other great cellists such as Heinrich Schiff, Boris Pergamenschikow, Frans Helmerson and Siegfried Palm. He was further influenced by his intense chamber music study with Uwe-Martin Haiberg and Walter Levin.
In 1994 he won the 1st prize in the ARD Iternational Music Competition, which had not been awarded to a cellist for 17 years. He gathered several years of valuable orchestral experience as principal cello of the Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester in Berlin and travelled the world as a member of the renowned Trio Fontenay. Since 2006 Jens Peter Maintz has been principal cello of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, on the invitation of Claudio Abbado.
His solo career has brought him into contact with conductors such as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Herbert Blomstedt, Marek Janowski, Dmitry Kitajenko, Franz Welser-Möst, Reinhard Goebel and Bobby McFerrin. He has appeared as a soloist with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Leipzig MDR Symphony Orchestra, Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, Den Haag Residenzorchester and Tokyo Symphony Orchestra.
Alongside classical repertoire, Jens Peter Maintz has performed numerous works by contemporary composers from Isang Yun to Georg Friedrich Haas.
Since 2004 Jens Peter Maintz has been a professor at Berlin University of the Arts, where he teaches a very successful cello class. Since 2017 he has also been teaching at the renowned Escuela Superior de Musica Reina Sofia in Madrid. Many of his students are Award winners in important international competitions and some hold leading positions in major orchestras.
Jens Peter Maintz is also a highly sought-after chamber musician. He is a member of the prestigious concert series Spectrum Concerts Berlin, and performs with chamber music partners such as Janine Jansen, Boris Brovtsyn, Torleif Thedéen, Hélène Grimaud, Kolja Blacher, Isabelle Faust, Antoine Tamestit, as well as the the Artemis, Carmina and Amaryllis Quartets.
For his CD with solo works by Bach, Dutilleux and Kodaly, which was released by Sony Classical, Jens Peter Maintz was awarded the ECHO-Klassik. The label Berlin Classics released his highly acclaimed recording of Haydn's cello concertos, accompanied by the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen.
The German violinist Tassilo Probst is without a doubt one of the most promising musicians of his generation. He is known for his multi-faceted performance of exceptional virtuosity, emotional depth and captivating stage presence.
In the 2023/2024 season, Ragnhild Hemsing will perform a wide range of programmes throughout Europe. In October 2023, together with the Philharmonic Orchestra Regensburg, she will perform Concerto for Hardanger Fiddle and Orchestra No. 2 by Tveitt from her current album BRUCH + TVEITT at the Regensburg Theatre. In addition, her concerts will take Hemsing to Katowice in Poland, where she will perform Grieg's Peer Gynt with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra. She will also perform Glass' Violin Concerto No. 1 with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra in the Grieghallen in Bergen. Another highlight will be Hemsing's debut with the Brighton Philharmonic under the baton of young conductor Adam Hickoxim at the Brighton Dome in April 2024. A tour with Trondheim Soloists will take the artist to Germany again with concerts in Munich and Fürth, among others. Together with the Württembergisches Orchester Reutlingen, Ragnhild Hemsing will be heard in Reutlingen and at the Gezeitenkonzerte in East Frisia. In the field of chamber music, Ragnhild Hemsing will be heard in Germany with long-standing partners such as the cellist Benedict Klöckner and Bjarke Mogensen.
The oboist Juri Vallentin is always looking for new forms of expression and storytelling on his instrument, a quest that has earned him a place among the most outstanding young musicians of our time. His objective is to constantly develop modern contexts for classical music from baroque to contemporary. Juri Vallentin was born in Mainz and studied in Nuremberg and at the famous Conservatoire de Paris, where he graduated with distinction. In 2021, he was appointed professor for oboe at the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe.
His artistic activities are documented by his debut album, BRIDGES, which features music spanning five centuries, as well as by numerous radio productions for German broadcasters BR, SWR and Deutschlandfunk. 2022 will see the release of his second album, EBENBILD, which combines music and literature and is inspired in its form and interpretation by early baroque poetry.
Already supported by Yehudi Menuhin at the age of seven, Danae Dörken caused attention early on in leading European concert halls with "her sparkling joy of playing" (Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger). After studying with the internationally revered piano pedagogue Karl-Heinz Kämmerling and the renowned soloist and teacher Lars Vogt, she is now a regular guest with leading orchestras such as the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra, the Nordic Chamber Orchestra, the Royal Northern Sinfonia, the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, the Norrlandsoperan Symphony, the Staatsphilharmonie Nuremberg, the Staatskapelle Weimar and has performed at London's Wigmore Hall, the Philharmonie de Paris, the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Mozarteum Salzburg, the Tonhalle Zurich, the Beaux-Arts Brussels, the Megaron in Athens, the Brucknerhaus Linz, the Philharmonie Cologne, the Gasteig Munich, the Konzerthaus Berlin, the Laeiszhalle Hamburg, Tonhalle Düsseldorf, the Alte Oper Frankfurt and the Beethovenhaus Bonn. Furthermore, she is a regular performer at major festivals such as the Kissinger Sommer, Schwetzinger Festspiele, LuganoMusica, Schleswig Holstein Musikfestival, Dresdner Musikfestspiele, Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and the prestigious chamber music festival "Spannungen" in Heimbach.
Highlights of the 2023/24 season include her debuts with the German Symphony Orchester (DSO) at the Berlin Philharmonic under the direction of Delyana Lazarova, and debuts with the Münster Symphony Orchestra, the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Komische Oper Berlin, with the Philharmonie Baden-Baden, and with the Prague Symphony Orchestra. In addition, recitals this season will take her to the Stadttheater Fürth, Guarnerius Hall Belgrade in Serbia, Waiblingen, Bayreuth, Solothurn in Switzerland and she will be a guest at the Dresden Music Festival, the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the GAIA Music Festival and the Sommerliche Musiktage Hitzacker.
In the summer of 2022, Alondra de la Parra curated the first edition of her newly founded festival PAAX GNP. In Mexico, the conductor welcomed famous musicians from all over the world, such as Julian Prégardien, Guy Braunstein, Nemanja Radulovic, Pacho Flores and Aleksey Igudesman, with whom she shared the stage in numerous concerts. Equally acclaimed by the press and the public, Mexico's official cultural ambassador has once again set new standards in her home country.
Juri Vallentin has won prizes at a number of major international competitions, including the XVI International Tchaikovsky Competition St. Petersburg as the first oboist to do so in the history of the event, the German Music Competition and the International Oboe Competition of Japan. He has also performed as soloist with orchestras such as the MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Mariinsky Orchestra in St. Petersburg, the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn, the Niedersächsisches Staatsorchester Hannover, the Musikkollegium Winterthur, the Brandenburgisches Staatsorchester Frankfurt and the Munich Chamber Orchestra. In 2021, he won the Berlin Prize for Young Artists, curated by VAN magazine, which recognises new concert formats devised by young soloists, for his solo performance INNER VOICES, devel- oped in collaboration with the director Neil Barry Moss.
His artistic activities are documented by his debut album, BRIDGES, which features music spanning five centuries, as well as by numerous radio productions for German broadcasters BR, SWR and Deutschlandfunk. 2022 will see the release of his second album, EBENBILD, which combines music and literature and is inspired in its form and interpretation by early baroque poetry.
In addition to the standard classical repertoire for oboe ranging from Vivaldi, Bach, Handel and Mozart to Strauss, Martinů and Zimmermann, he is very passionately involved in working with contemporary composers. Juri Vallentin has played many world and German premieres of pieces by composers such as Toshio Hosokawa, Gilles Silvestrini and András Hamary and is enthusiastic about rediscovering worthwhile music for his instrument that has been forgot- ten, such as works by Johann Christoph Pez, Charles Bochsa and Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre.
Juri Vallentin was born in Mainz and studied in Nuremberg and at the famous Conservatoire de Paris, where he graduated with distinction. In 2021, he was appointed professor for oboe at the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe.
Reto Bieri served as Artistic Director of the Swiss DAVOS FESTIVAL - young artists in concert between 2013 and 2018. Since 2012 he has taught at the University of Music in Würzburg, Germany as Professor of Chamber Music. He lives with his family in a remote Swiss Alpine location in the Bernese Oberland.
Job Titles:
- Assistant to Gerd Albrecht
- Conductor
Sebastian Lang-Lessing began his international career as assistant to Gerd Albrecht at the Hamburg Saatsoper. In 1993, he was brought to the Deutsche Oper Berlin by his mentor Götz Friedrich as the youngest principal conductor at the time. At the age of just 24, he received the coveted "Ferenc Fricsay Prize". Today Lang-Lessing is an established and respected international artist and regularly conducts at the opera houses of Paris, Hamburg, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, Oslo, Copenhagen, Stockholm Seattle, Vancouver, Sydney, Tokyo, Seoul and Cape Town. He was principal conductor of the Orchestre symphonique et lyrique de Nancy and the Nancy Opera, which under his leadership developed into the Opéra national de Lorraine, the most important opera house in northern France. He also led the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, with whom he released an extensive and multi-award-winning discography, and in ten years together made his mark on the San Antonio Symphony Orchestra, of which he was subsequently appointed MD Emeritus. Since 2020, Sebastian Lang-Lessing has been Music Director of the Korean National Opera, where he has led several successful productions since 2018, most recently a new production of "Fidelio" in collaboration with visual artist Kevork Mourad.
In the 2021/22 season, in addition to productions at the Korean National Opera, Sebastian Lang-Lessing will also be a guest conductor at the Copenhagen Tivoli, the Liechtenstein Symphony Orchestra, the Malmö Symphony Orchestra and the Brandenburg State Orchestra Frankfurt (Oder), among others. At the Hungarian National Opera he conducts performances of Johann Sebastian Bach's St Matthew Passion in the version by Felix Mendelssohn. In San Antonio, he serves as an honorary conductor on various projects, continuing his strong relationship with the orchestra and his commitment to the fine arts in Texas.
Highlights of recent seasons include performances of his Tristan/Elgar arrangement with cellist István Várdai and the Hungarian National Philharmonic in Budapest, the closing concerts of the Tivoli Festival in Copenhagen with Renée Fleming, and a return to Seoul with a new production of Samson and Delilah and La Traviata. He also opened the iconic Oslo Opera House and worked in Paris with Maurice Béjart on his spectacular interpretation of Ludwig van Beethoven's 9th Symphony, which he later toured in Japan. Lang-Lessing conducted China's first production of an opera by Richard Strauss, "Der Rosenkavalier" at the NCPA in Beijing and led numerous concerts and master classes.
In 2020, during the corona pandemic, he launched the website "VirtuMasterClass", an online platform for instrumental and vocal master classes where renowned soloists and interested students from all over the world can connect. Among the teachers Sebastian Lang-Lessing has been able to recruit for this project are the cellists Johannes Moser and Alban Gerhardt, violinist Vadim Gluzman and pianist Alessio Bax.
Sebastian Lang-Lessing is a true cosmopolitan. He speaks five languages fluently, loves to travel and holds music director titles on five continents. In education projects, he is committed to the future and low-threshold of classical music. His friendships with composers such as Detlev Glanert, Brett Dean and Stewart Copeland have led to a series of new commissions and premieres.
Artists such as Yo-Yo Ma, Emanuel Ax, Joshua Bell, Olga Kern, Susan Graham, Kirill Gerstein, Lynn Harrell, Lang Lang and Augustin Hadelich became regulars with the orchestra during Lang-Lessing's time with the San Antonio Symphony. He has a long artistic friendship with many of them. He also maintains a close musical relationship with the singer Renée Feming, with whom he released the album "Guilty Pleasures" (DECCA) in 2012 with the Philharmonia Orchestra London and a broad repertoire of arias and songs.
Sebastian Manz regularly demonstrates his enthusiasm for arranging and composing in concerts and within his discography, which has won numerous awards. The CD A Bernstein Story (Berlin Classics), released in August 2019, which he recorded together with the jazz musician Sebastian Studnitzky, contains arrangements and original compositions by the musicians and inspires both the classical and the jazz music scene. The Mannheimer Morgen newspaper described the album as "a bubbling laboratory with musically highly inspiring experiments" and certified "limitless listening pleasure". In May 2020 the CD Father Copland with the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra Heilbronn under Case Scaglione was released by Berlin Classics; The new album with the clarinet concertos by Carl Nielsen and Magnus Lindberg was also released by Berlin Classics in early September 2020 and received enthusiastic reviews. Here Magnus Lindberg himself stands at the conductor's podium for his concert. In spring 2022 his current recital CD with works by Johannes Brahms and Robert Schumann, which he recorded together with the pianist Herbert Schuch, was released on the Berlin Classics label.
As the grandson of the Russian violinist Boris Goldstein, the son of two pianists, born in Hanover in 1986, found his musical roots in his German-Russian family home. At the age of six Sebastian Manz sang in the boys' choir, first learned to play the piano but soon concentrated on the clarinet. Ever since he first heard Benny Goodman's recording of Carl Maria von Weber's E flat major Concerto, he has been fascinated by the instrument. None other than Sabine Meyer and Rainer Wehle are among his most important teachers and supporters.
Tomáš Brauner works regularly with leading symphony orchestras and opera houses including the Czech Philharmonic, Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, Münchner Symphoniker, Nürnberger Symphoniker, Slovak Philharmonic, Philharmonie Sudwestfalen, National Radio Orchestra Romania, Moscow Radio State Orchestra, Athens Orchestra of Colours, PKF - Prague Philharmonia, and many more.
Tomáš Brauner began his opera conducting career at the J.K. Tyl Theatre in Plzeň. He made his debut at the Prague State Opera in 2008 with a performance of Verdi's Othello. In the National Theater in Prague, he conducts Verdi's La Traviata. He has conducted Janáček's Jenůfa at the prestigious Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City.
Tomáš Brauner also receives regular invitations to perform at major international festivals such as Prague Spring, Bad Kissingen, and the Richard Strauss Festival in Garmisch Partenkirchen.
His recording of the complete cello works by Bohuslav Martinů for the Dabringhaus und Grimm label won Classic Prague Awards 2017.
Tomáš Brauner was born in Prague in 1978. After graduating in conducting from the Prague Academy of Performing Arts in 2005 he undertook a study attachment at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Vienna. Five years later he was a prizewinner at the Dimitris Mitropoulos International Conducting Competition in Athens.