Anton Kuerti Biography

Pianist Anton Kuerti was born in Austria, grew up in the U.S., and has lived in Canada for the last 35 years. His teachers included Arthur Loesser, Mieczyslaw Horszowski, and Rudolf Serkin. At the age of 11 he performed the Grieg Concerto with Arthur Fiedler, and he was still a student when he won the famous Leventritt Award.

Anton Kuerti has toured 31 countries, including Japan, Russia, and most European countries, and has performed with most major North American orchestras and conductors, such as the New York Philharmonic, National Symphony (Menuhin), Cleveland Orchestra (Szell), Philadelphia Orchestra (Ormandy), and the orchestras of Atlanta, Denver, Detroit, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and San Francisco. His vast repertoire includes some 50 concertos, including one he composed himself.

In Canada Kuerti has appeared in about 140 communities from coast to coast, and has played with every professional orchestra, including over 30 concerts with the Toronto Symphony. As a chamber musician, he has performed the major repertoire with such artists as Gidon Kremer, Yo-Yo Ma, Janos Starker, Barry Tuckwell, and the Cleveland, Guarneri, and Tokyo string quartets.

Kuerti is one of today’s most recorded artists: compact discs of his performances include all the Beethoven concertos and sonatas, the Schubert sonatas, the Brahms concertos, and works by many other composers. These recordings air almost daily on the CBC. Anton Kuerti has been described as “the best pianist currently playing”.

Kuerti is an Officer of the Order of Canada, and has received several honourary doctorates.

Jacques Thibaud String Trio Biography

Prize-winners in the prestigious 1999 Bonn Chamber Music Competition, the Jacques Thibaud String Trio was founded at the Berlin School of Art in 1994. Since then, the ensemble has performed throughout Europe, Japan and over 40 States of the US, receiving tremendous acclaim from audiences and critics alike.

Calling their playing "spontaneous and commanding," the New York Times said, "this could be the first string trio in some time to have a major career."

With their charm, youthful exuberance and astounding virtuosity, the Trio has delighted audiences of all ages in large and small venues. In the U.S., they have appeared at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall, Alice Tully Hall and Walter Reade Theatre, New York City's Frick Collection, Washington DC's National Gallery, and the Cleveland Museum of Art.

They have also given successful residencies in settings ranging from conservatories to music camps to an Indian reservation in Arizona. In Canada, the Jacques Thibaud String Trio performed in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, featuring Anton Kuerti as their guest pianist.

Internationally, the Trio has appeared at London's Wigmore Hall, in Germany at Berlin's Konzerthaus and Philharmonie, at the Alte Oper Frankfurt and at the Musikhalle Hamburg, in Japan on several concert tours in Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe and Nagano, and at the Seoul National University in South Korea, and at some of Europe's most prestigious festivals including the Beethoven Festival in Bonn/Germany, Belgium's Musica Mundi (three return invitations), Denmark's Roskilde Festival and Gidon Kremer's Echternach Festival in Luxembourg.

Burkhard Maiss, violin, was born in 1969 in Dusseldorf and began music lessons at the age of five. He won several prizes at the German competition "Jugend musiziert." In 1986 he enrolled at the Julius Stern Institute in Berlin, and continued his studies under Professor Koji Toyoda at the Berlin School of Art. At that time he was first chair violinist and soloist with the Berlin Sibelius Orchestra, among others, and attended the Masters Course of Professor Mandeau, where he finished his master's degree in 1996. He also has worked with Thomas Brandis, concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic, and Gyorgy Sebok. Maiss plays a violin by Lorenzo Storioni made in 1796 in Cremona/Italy.

Philip Douvier, viola, was born in 1970 in Berlin and started playing the violin at the age of six, and added the viola to his instrumentarium at age 14. At that time, he founded the Kreisler String Quartet, and was the ensemble's violist and arranger for ten years. Douvier studied viola with Claude Lelong and Joachim Greiner at the Berlin School of Art and took master classes with Professors Toyoda and Mandeau. He has been solo violist with the North German Chamber Philharmonic and twice won the prize for chamber music in Berlin's Young Composer's Competition. By becoming an amateur double bass player, he has recently been able to expand his musical activities by two more octaves. Douvier's viola was made in March, 2007 by Robert Clemens of St. Louis, Missouri.

Bogdan Jianu, cello, was born in Bucharest, Romania in 1975 and began cello lessons at the age of nine with Anca Iarosevici. He continued studies at the Dinu Lipatti Music School and the Bucharest Music Academy. In 1996 Jianu moved to Berlin where he was a student of Prof. Markus Nyikos and finished his master´s degree. Jianu won first prizes in Romanian competitions in 1987, 1994, 1998 and 3rd prize in the international Janacek Competition in 2000. From 1997-1999 he received scholarships from the Hindemith Association in Berlin. He has been a member of several ensembles, including the Radio Chamber Orchestra Bucharest and the Kammerphilharmonie Berlin, and has worked with artists like Radu Adulescu and Menahem Pressler of the Beaux Arts Trio. Jianu’s cello was built over a century ago by an unknown maker in Bohemia (in today’s Czech Republic).