Thomas Riebl
viola master-class, May 22 – 25, 2025 (4 x 45 minutes)
Born in Vienna in 1956, Thomas Riebl studied with Siegfried Führlinger, Peter Schidlof and Sandor Végh.
He won third prize at the International Competition in Munich/ARD 1976 and in 1982 first prize as well as the Ernst Wallfisch Memorial Award at the International Naumburg Competition in New York.
Thomas Riebl has been invited to many of the major international music festivals (e.g. Salzburger Festspiele) and has appeared at venues such as Carnegie Hall, Concertgebouw Amsterdam and the "Goldene Saal" of the Wiener Musikverein. He has performed with numerous leading orchestras including the Chicago, Berlin and Vienna Symphony, the Bavarian, Finish and Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestras, with conductors such as Claudio Abbado, Horst Stein, Edo de Waart, Andrew Davies and Sylvain Cambreling.
His chamber music partners have included Jessey Norman, Andras Schiff, Oleg Maisenberg, Elisabeth Leonskaja, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Lars Vogt, Gidon Kremer, Isabelle Faust, Joshua Bell, Tabea Zimmermann, Natalia Gutman, Boris Pergamenschikow, Sabine Meyer and leading string quartets.
Several pieces have been written for him, e.g. the solo sonata by Gottfried v. Einem, the concerto and "Konzertante Fantasie" by Ivan Eröd and the "Toccata for Thomas" by Garth Knox. He gave the Austrian first performance of the concerto by A.Schnittke in Graz.
From 1972 – 1979 he was a member of the Franz-Schubert-Quartett, Vienna (first prize at the competition of the European broadcast cooporations in Stockholm in 1974); subsequently he became a founder member of the Vienna String Sextet (1979 – 2004), which performed worldwide and recorded several CDs for EMI and pan classics.
Since 1983, Thomas Riebl has been a professor at the Mozarteum University Salzburg. He has given numerous master classes worldwide, visiting the most prestigious universities, such as Guildhall/London, UdK und Hanns Eisler/Berlin, Juilliard/N.Y., NEC/Boston and Curtis Institute/Philadelphia. Many of his students won international competitions (Tokyo, ARD Munich) and became professors at music universities or members of leading orchestras and string quartets.
He has been member/head of the jury at several international competitions, including ARD/Munich and Tokyo. He is artistic director of the Internationale Sommerakademie Bad Leonfelden, Austria since 2003 and has recorded for RCA, pan classics and Hyperion Records.
In 2010, together with luthier Bernd Hiller, he developed a five string tenor viola (with a low F string, made by Thomastik-Infeld) on which he performes F. Schubert's Arpeggione Sonata (low string tuned to E), J. S. Bach's lute version of his 5th cello suite (top and lowest string tuned g/G), his 6th cello suite, his sonatas for viola da gamba, Beethoven's first cello sonatas op.5, Mozart's clarinet concerto (the original basset clarinet version), as well as recently written pieces for this instrument, including the "Toccata for Thomas" by Garth Knox.
Accompaniment
Peter Wittenberg, piano
Peter Wittenberg comes from a family of Latvian musicians and received his first piano lessons at an early age. At the age of 16, he won the Bronislaw Kaper Prize of the Los Angeles Philharmonic with the Second Piano Concerto by Sergei Prokofiev. Since then, Peter Wittenberg has been a worldwide guest on renowned concert stages, such as the Alte Oper Frankfurt, Menuhin Festival Gstaad, New York's Carnegie Weill Hall, Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, Athenaeum Bucharest, Salzburg Mozarteum or Baden-Baden Philharmonic.
Peter Wittenberg is particularly dedicated to string chamber music and performs regularly with violinistn such as Wonhee Bae, Esmé Quartet, Ziyu He or the Altenberg Trio. He also performs with partners such as cellists Clemens Hagen, Raphaël Pidoux, Danjulo Ishizaka, Christian Poltera, Louise Hopkins, Julius Berger and Xenia Jankovic, violinistn Gottfried von der Goltz, Levon Chilingirian and Eszter Haffner, and violist Thomas Riebl.
He has been piano accompanist to soprano Ruby Hughes, mezzo-soprano Kelly O'Connor and baritone Anton Belov.
Peter Wittenberg completed his piano studies in the USA. At Indiana University he studied with the Russian pianist Lev Vlassenko, and at New York's Juilliard School of Music with Jerome Lowenthal and Vitaly Margulis. He attended master classes with Maurizio Pollini, Dmitri Bashkirov, Fou T'song and Lev Naumov, among others. He also studied orchestral conducting at the St. Petersburg Conservatory with conductors Alexander Polischuk and Ilya Musin.
Peter Wittenberg participated in chamber music master classes with Christoph Poppen, Gerhard Schulz, Heinrich Schiff, András Keller and Paul Roczek. He also received important impulses from collaborations with Clemens Hagen, Rainer Schmidt and members of the Hagen Quartet.
He is regularly engaged as a piano accompanist at well-known competitions such as the Salzburg International Mozart Competition.
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