Jochen Kupfer, bass-baritone

KS Jochen Kupfer is a much sought-after singer both in concert halls and on the opera stage. In addition to his engagements at the Semperoper Dresden and the Staatstheater Nürnberg, guest appearances have taken him to the opera houses in Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai, Strasbourg, Zürich and to the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, the Bergen Nasjonale Opera, to the Volksoper Vienna, to the opera house and styriarte Graz as well as to Staatsoper Hamburg, Komische Oper Berlin, Oper Leipzig, Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin and Bayerische Staatsoper München.
Jochen Kupfer has given recitals and concerts performances throughout Europe, Japan, Mexico, Brazil, Hong Kong, Israel and the United States as well as at international festivals.
His opera repertoire includes roles such as Amfortas (Parsifal), the title roles in The Flying Dutchman, Wozzeck, Bluebeard’s Castle and The Demon, Kurwenal (Tristan and Isolde), Beckmesser (Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg), Gunther (Götterdämmerung), Mandryka (Arabella), Orest (Elektra) and Jochanaan (Salome).
Jochen Kupfer’s concert repertoire includes Johann Sebastian Bach’s passions and Haydn’s Schöpfung as well as the romantic oratorios, Orff’s Carmina burana and also the famous Lied cycles and Lieder from the late romantic period up to classical modernism.
Jochen Kupfer has appeared with famous conductors including Giuseppe Sinopoli, Kurt Masur, Riccardo Chailly, Vladimir Jurowski, Krzysztof Urbanski, Dirk Kaftan, Constantin Trinks, Raphael Frühbeck de Burgos, René Jacobs, Philippe Herreweghe, Jeffrey Tate, Enoch zu Guttenberg, Christof Prick, Kent Nagano, Fabio Luisi, Yuri Temirkanov, Paavo Järvi, Sir Roger Norrington and Herbert Blomstedt.
Jochen Kupfer’s extensive discography includes numerous CD and DVD recordings.
He is currently working on the three-part “Hans Sommer Lied Edition” (Naxos/BR Klassik), the second CD of which was shortlisted for the German Record Critics’ Award.
When he was only nine years old, he got his first singing lessons at the music school of his native town of Grimma.
He studied with Helga Forner (Musikhochschule Leipzig) and attended master classes with Theo Adam, Elisabeth
Schwarzkopf and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, completing his studies with Rudolf Piernay, Harald Stamm and Dale Fundling.

Gerold Huber, pianist

Born in Straubing, Gerold Huber won a scholarship to the University of Music and Theatre Munich, where he studied the piano with Friedemann Berger, as well as attending Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s Lieder class in Berlin. In 1998 he won the Prix International Pro Musicis in Paris and New York with Christian Gerhaher, with whom he has enjoyed a long-standing partnership as a song duo since their student days.
Gerold Huber is a frequent guest at festivals such as the Schubertiade in Schwarzenberg, the Salzburg and Schwetzingen Festivals, the Munich Opera Festival, the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and the Rheingau Music Festival, as well as at leading concert venues such as the Cologne Philharmonie, the Alte Oper Frankfurt, the Vienna Musikverein, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Wigmore Hall in London, Carnegie Hall in New York and the concert halls in Essen, Dortmund and Baden-Baden.
As a sought-after accompanist he works with internationally renowned singers, including Christiane Karg, Christina Landshamer, Anna Lucia Richter, Michael Nagy, Maximilian Schmitt, Martin Mitterrutzner, Julian Prégardien, Georg Zeppenfeld, Tareq Nazmi and Franz-Josef Selig.
His chamber music partners include the Artemis Quartet, the Henschel Quartet, Reinhold Friedrich and Maximilian Hornung. As a soloist his primary focus is on the works of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms and Schubert. Concert engagements have taken him to venues and festivals including the Munich Residenz, the Kultursommer Nordhessen and the Aotearoa New Zealand Festival in Wellington. He is also artistic director of the Pollinger Tage für Alte und Neue Musik.
His extensive discography includes two solo CDs, recordings with Günther Groissböck, Bernarda Fink, Ruth Ziesak, Maximilian Schmitt, Christina Landshamer and Franz-Josef Selig, and numerous multi-award-winning recordings with Christian Gerhaher. In 2021 Sony Classical released their complete Schumann edition Alle Lieder, and in May 2023 the same label released Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde in the piano version with Piotr Beczała and Christian Gerhaher.
Gerold Huber is a highly respected teacher and gives masterclasses at Yale University, the Aldeburgh Festival and the Schwetzingen Festival. Since 2013 he has been a professor of accompaniment at the University of Music in Würzburg, and in 2022 he took up a post together with Christian Gerhaher at the University of Music and Theatre Munich.