Tanja Tetzlaff
For decades, Tanja Tetzlaff has been one of the most influential musicians of her generation, both as soloist and chamber musician. Her playing is characterized by a uniquely fine yet powerful and nuanced sound, which always goes hand in hand with cultivated musicality. Tanja Tetzlaff’s trademark is her extraordinarily broad repertoire and her desire for new, groundbreaking concert formats.

In April 2021, Tanja Tetzlaff became the first scholarship holder to be awarded the highly endowed Glenn Gould Bach Fellowship of the city of Weimar. She now has the opportunity to realize a two-year film project relating Bach’s famous cello suites to nature and climate change issues: Suites4Nature / Suites for a Wounded World.

Tanja Tetzlaff is a founding member of the Tetzlaff Quartet (Christian Tetzlaff, Elisabeth Kufferath, and Hanna Weinmeister). She plays a cello by Giovanni Baptista Guadagnini from 1776.

Barbara Buntrock
took her first violin lessons at the age of five; it was only just before entering university-level studies that she discovered her love for the viola, its deeper tones and timbres.

She studied at several music universities: in Cologne with Werner Dickel, in Lübeck with Barbara Westphal, at the Juilliard School in New York City with Heidi Castleman, and in Berlin with Tabea Zimmermann and Lars Anders Tomter.

From February 2009 to December 2010, Barbara Buntrock was Principal Violist of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra but decided to devote herself instead to solo appearances and chamber music.

In 2015, she was appointed Viola Professor at the Robert Schumann University of Music in Düsseldorf.

Buntrock plays a viola made by Antonio Mariani in Pesaro, ca. 1650, an instrument that previously belonged to legendary violist Lionel Tertis.

Her most recent recordings on CD include Walter Braunfels’s Scottish Fantasia (on the Capriccio label) and the viola concertos of Christian Westerhoff (cpo). In contrast to her musical activities, her two children have been the leading voice in Barbara Buntrock‘s life since 2021.

Florian Donderer
As a chamber musician, soloist, conductor and concertmaster – equally at home on the violin and viola – he is a highly esteemed partner of many renowned musicians and a welcome guest at prestigious chamber music series and festivals. Since 2019, he has been the director of the Rottweil Music Festival Sommersprossen; together with his wife, Tanja Tetzlaff, he curates the chamber music series residenz@sendesaal at Sendesaal Bremen. With the Signum Quartet as its leader, he has travelled to international venues throughout Europe and even to New York‘s Carnegie Hall.

As concertmaster and artistic director, he is a guest performer with various European chamber orchestras and a lecturer in violin, chamber music and orchestral playing at numerous universities. He plays a violin made by German violin maker Peter Greiner in 2003, as well as bows by Nico Plog from Antwerp.

Kilian Herold
Widely known as a multifaceted chamber musician, a renowned clarinet soloist, and a high-profile orchestra musician, Kilian Herold is one of the most interesting and versatile clarinetists of his generation.

After having held the post of Principal Clarinet at the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and the SWR Symphony Orchestra, he was appointed Clarinet Professor at Freiburg University of Music in 2016. Herold is frequently invited to guest with the Berlin Philharmonic and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and can be regularly seen and heard at a number of international chamber music and contemporary music festivals.