Robert Ward Director
Concerto*Fest*Austria
©2012
All rights reserved
ROBERT LEHRBAUMER (Vienna), piano, conducting
One of Austria's most renowned interpreters: celebrated pianist, organist and conductor. Born in Vienna, Robert Lehrbaumer started his career at the age of 9 when he made his appearance as a pianist in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Since then, concert tours have brought him to almost all European countries and capitals, to North, Central and South America, to the Near East, South-East Asia, Korea, and Japan, in famous locations from Vienna's Musikverein und Konzerthaus to New York's Carnegie-Hall and Tokyo's Casals Hall. Robert Lehrbaumer began to study piano at the age of six. From 8 to 13 he was a member of the Mozart Boys Choir. Two years later, he entered the Vienna University of Music and Dramatic Art to study piano, organ, and conducting. Prizes in numerous competitions, especially Geneva 1985, and scholarships by Boesendorfer and the Alban Berg Stiftung distinguish the young interpreter.
When he was 11, he had his first appearance as a soloist with orchestras and has since performed concerts with the Vienna Philharmonic, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Bruckner Orchestra/Linz the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, the Camerata Academica Salzburg, the Vienna Chamber Orchestra and with many foreign orchestras under the baton of conductors such as Claudio Abbado, Yehudi Menuhin, Sandor Vegh, Andre Previn, Leopold Hager.
Musical partnerships with Wolfgang Schneiderhan, Anton Dermota, Walter Berry, Angelika Kirchschlager, Bo Skovhus, Friedrich Gulda, Rudolf Schock, Philippe Entremont and others. Robert Lehrbaumer pursued his careers as an organist and as a pianist simultaneously. His special piano-organ-recitals, also with orchestras, are very popular events for which he gets rave reviews. He has participated in numerous festivals such as the Vienna Festival, Salzburg Festival, Brucknerfest/Linz, Carinthian Summer/Ossiach, Bregenz Spring, Luzern Music Festival, the Nuremberg Organ-Week, Slovakia Spring-Festival, Schubert-Festival/Washington D.C., Festival Cervantino/ Mexico. At the age of 25, he played a solo-recital in the cycle "Master-Soloists" in the Vienna Konzerthaus, together with Abbado, Sinopoli, Previn, Caballe, Brendel.
In addition, Robert Lehrbaumer has made recordings for radio and TV stations, LP and CD; he has starred in films and videos. He teaches at International master courses in Austria and abroad and holds master classes at the University of Music in Vienna and at universities in USA and Mexico and Asia. Member of juries of international competitions. President of the international piano competition "Zagreb 2006." When conducting Robert Lehrbaumer is known also performing both as conductor and pianist in works of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Gershwin, Poulenc.
Languages of instruction: German, English
ROBERT WARD (Los Angeles), piano, conducting
pursues an active international career as pianist, orchestral conductor, chamber musician, artistic director of music festivals, juror at international competitions, and master teacher. He has received numerous awards and honors, including the Prix di Positano for outstanding performance of Beethoven's piano music, an Austrian Government Grant for study with Professor Dieter Weber at the Akademie fur Musik in Vienna, and Carlo Zecchi at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, and a Fulbright Award for study in Italy with Wilhelm Kempff. A native of Illinois, his early teachers were former pupils of Isabelle Vengerova, Artur Schnabel, and Emil von Sauer, one of the last pupils of Franz Liszt. Later in New York, he coached with Dorothy Taubman.
MARGIT FUSSI (Vienna), accompanying
Long admired for his performances of the Viennese classical composers, Robert Ward is also a proponent of American music, giving many first performances abroad. He first came to international attention when he introduced Samuel Barber's Piano Concerto during a 10-country tour of South America sponsored by the U.S. State Department. He is a foremost interpreter of the music of George Gershwin, reflected by numerous appearances with orchestras across the country, and of John Cage.
With colleagues from Vienna, he founded and served as Artistic Director of Concerto*Fest*Austria, an international festival in Bad Aussee, Austria. The festival featured a chamber orchestra from Bratislava in-residence to perform cycles of Mozart and Beethoven Piano Concerti. In collaboration with the Vienna International Orchester, Robert Ward moved this exciting program to Vienna in 2007 in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Altenburger Musik Akademie.
In addition to his pianistic and scholarly activities, Robert Ward is a founding director of the California Philharmonic orchestra in Los Angeles. Making his conducting debut at age 17, he has conducted college and professional orchestras in the U.S. and a Mozart Concerto course in Prague.
Renowned as a master teacher, he has produced prize-winning students in national and international competitions. In 2002, the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts honored Robert Ward as a Distinguished Teacher in the Arts for inspiring young artists and "having the most profound influence on their artistic development." Professor Ward has taught on the faculties of the University of Southern California and UCLA in Los Angeles. He is currently Professor of Piano at California State University and Occidental College, and Professor of Chamber Music at California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. He is active at summer festivals world-wide, including the Liszt Piano Academy in Sopron, Hungary; Corso Internazionale di Musica da Camera in Positano, Italy; and at Tunghai University in Taiwan. He is an artistic adviser to the AMEROPA Festival in Prague and teaches privately in Vienna each summer. In August 2011, Robert Ward is invited by the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Society to present a week of master classes.
Languages of instruction:English, German
Margit Fussi performs as a piano soloist, as an accompanist for singers and instrumentalists (Hans Hotter, Kim Borg, Iliana Cotrubas, Robert Holl, Elly Ameling, Kurt Equiluz, Graziella Sciutti et al.), as well as and organist and harpsichordist.
She has been the accompanist for master classes in Vienna, Heidelberg, Stuttgart, Berlin, Aldeborough, Matsue, Osaka, Nagoya, Cleveland.
She has been a teacher for Lied-accompanist in Tokyo, Matsue, Hamamatsu as well as in Seoul and at the Vienna Master Classes. She can be credited with many CD and radio recordings.