Thomas Demenga

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Thomas Demenga (born June 12, 1954 in Bern ) is a Swiss cellist and composer .

Live and act

Thomas Demenga studied with Walter Grimmer, Antonio Janigro , Leonard Rose and Mstislav Rostropovich and at the Juilliard School in New York. He gives concerts as a chamber musician and soloist at all major festivals and music centers around the world. Thomas Demenga has been leading a training and soloist class at the Basel School of Music since 1980 . From August 2001 Demenga was director of the Davos Festival young artists in concert , which he directed for the last time in 2006.

At the Lucerne Festival in summer 2003, Thomas Demenga worked as an artiste étoile . An extensive series of CD recordings, published by ECM , documents his artistic work. In 2002 the last CD of his recording of Bach's solo suites was released in combination with works by contemporary composers such as Heinz Holliger , Elliott Carter , Sándor Veress , Bernd Alois Zimmermann , Isang Yun and Toshio Hosokawa , which began in the mid-1980s. Several of his recordings were awarded the German Record Critics' quarterly award.

He appears in concerts with fellow musicians such as Heinz Holliger, Gidon Kremer , Thomas Larcher , Paul Meyer , Aurèle Nicolet , Hansheinz Schneeberger , Thomas Zehetmair and Tabea Zimmermann . Thomas Demenga has worked with conductors such as Moshe Atzmon , Myung-Whun Chung , Charles Dutoit , Claus Peter Flor , Howard Griffiths , Heinz Holliger, Armin Jordan , Okko Kamu , Mstislaw Rostropowitsch , Dennis Russell Davies , Wolfgang Sawallisch , Sándor Végh , Mario Venzago and Hiroshi Wakasugi together.

He is particularly dedicated to new music and also deals with improvisation. His own musical language as a composer and interpreter of works from the 20th and 21st centuries (including many premieres) forms a new and complementary dimension to the historical performance practice of baroque music and its interpretations of the classical and romantic repertoire. He has also represented these interests as the artistic director of the Camerata Zurich Chamber Orchestra since 2011 .

In 1991 Demenga was the first Swiss to be awarded first prize at the congress of the Tribune Internationale des Compositeurs in Paris for his work solo per due for two cellos.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Paul Griffiths: The Penguin companion to classical music . Penguin Putnam, London 2005, ISBN 978-0-14-051559-6 , p. 219.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Demenga, Thomas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss cellist and composer
DATE OF BIRTH June 12, 1954
PLACE OF BIRTH Bern