Nicolas Altstaedt

Nicolas Altstaedt, who was born in 1982 to Franco-German parents in Heidelberg, was among the last students of the late Russian cellist Boris Pergamenschikow at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music in Berlin, where he then continued his studies with Eberhard Feltz. Altstaedt won the German Music Competition and the International Domnick Cello Competition in Stuttgart in 2005 and the Adam International Cello Competition in New Zealand in 2006. In 2008 Mischa Maisky chose him to receive the Marguerite Duetschler Award at the Sommets Musicaux in Gstaad, and in February 2009 he was awarded a Borletti Buitoni Trust Fellowship. He is the recipient of the Credit Suisse Young Artist Award for 2010, which also includes a joint appearance with the Vienna Philharmonic at LUCERNE FESTIVAL. As a soloist, Nicolas Altstaedt has concertized with the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, the Bamberg Symphony, the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Simón Bolívar Venezuelan Youth Orchestra. In the field of chamber music, he partners with Gidon Kremer, Daniel Hope, Emmanuel Pahud, Kirill Gerstein, the Quatuor Ebène, and the Scharoun Ensemble; he also numbers among the few European artists who have been accepted into the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society of New York. Invitations have brought him to the festivals in Salzburg, Lockenhaus, Ludwigsburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Rheingau, Davos, and Jerusalem; for these occasions, Altstaedt has also appeared as a performer of contemporary music, interpreting works by Sofia Gubaidulina, Georg Friedrich Haas, Frangis Ali-Sade, and Wilhelm Killmayer. His discography includes cello concertos by Haydn and Schumann, among others. Nicolas Altstaedt performs on a cello built by Nicolas Lupot (Paris, 1821), on loan from the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben.

July 2010