Christina Landshamer is a versatile artist who, as recitalist as well as with her varied concert and opera repertoire, is in international demand. Her collaborations with renowned conductors such as Herbert Blomstedt, Manfred Honeck, Alan Gilbert, Marek Janowski and many others regularly result in concerts with major international orchestras – from the Berlin Philharmonic to the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra to the Orchestre de Paris. In The States, this soprano has also appeared with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as with the Pittsburgh Symphony and the Montreal Symphony Orchestras.

Christina Landshamer has given opera performances at the Komische Oper Berlin, at the Theater an der Wien with Nikolaus Harnoncourt and also with Sir Simon Rattle at the Salzburg Festspiele. At the Nationaloper Amsterdam, she has sung ›Pamina‹ in Simon McBurney’s ›Zauberflöte‹ and ›Woglinde‹ in Wagner’s ›Rheingold‹ at the Bayerischen Staatsoper with Kirill Petrenko conducting. She has also performed in a spectacular La-Fura-dels-Baus production of Haydn’s ›Schöpfung‹ in Paris as well as at the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York. With her warm, lyric soprano voice, Christina Landshamer is as welcome as a Lieder singer at the Schwarzenberg Schubertiade as she is in London, New York or Tokyo.

She has over 50 CD and DVD recordings to her name and was called to take up a professorship for Vocal Studies at the Trossingen College of Music in 2021.

The Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks was founded in 1946 as the first of Bavarian Broadcasting’s musical ensembles. Its artistic upswing initially ran parallel to the development of the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, the Principal Conductor of which has been Mariss Jansons since 2003.

In 2005, Peter Dijkstra was appointed artistic director. An avowed “anti-specialist” he has presented a wide variety of programmes. The musical focus lies on contemporary vocal music as well as collaborations with period ensembles. Because of its special sound quality and stylistic versatility, which ranges through every aspect of choral singing from the mediæval motet to contemporary works, from oratorio to grand opera, the ensemble enjoys the highest reputation throughout the world.

This has brought the chorus regularly to Japan and festivals in Bonn, Bremen, Lucerne and Salzburg, as well as to collaborations with top European orchestras like the Berlin Philharmonic, the Concertgebouworkest in Amsterdam or the Bavarian State Philharmonic. In the recent past, the chorus has concerted with such distinguished conductors as Claudio Abbado, Giovanni Antonini, Andris Nelsons, Yannick Nezet-Seguin, Herbert Blomstedt, Bernard Haitink, Daniel Harding, Riccardo Muti and Christian Thielemann.

Markus Fein studied Applied Cultural Studies at the University of Lüneburg and Musicology and Art History at the universities of Hamburg and Vienna. He completed his PhD thesis at the University of Hamburg. In 2001, he became Artistic Director of the ›Sommerliche Musiktage Hitzacker‹. Parallel to this, he also directed the Wolfgang Rihm Festival ›Im Atelier der Klänge‹ and the ›Experiment Geschwindigkeit‹ Festival in Göttingen.

From 2006 to 2011, Markus Fein was Director of the ›Niedersächsischen Musiktage‹. In 2010/11, he was Artistic Advisor and Head of Programming/Dramaturgy with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

Markus Fein has taught at the universities in Lüneburg and Hamburg, at the Musikhochschule Hamburg, the seminar centre of the Alfred Toepfer Foundation, the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste and the Musikhochschule Detmold. He has published articles and essays, as well as the monograph ›Im Sog der Klänge. Gespräche mit dem Komponisten Jörg Widmann‹.

Dr Markus Fein has been Festival Director of the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern since the beginning of 2014. For many years, he has been actively engaged in developing new concert formats and dialogue forums aimed at promoting a better understanding of music.