Joanna Kamenarska

Joanna Kamenarska studied with Josif Radionov in Sofia and with Ruggiero Ricci and Igar Ozim in Salzburg. She has been performing since her earliest childhood and continues to do so in Germany and abroad. She won various prizes, for example a third prize at the International Mozart Competition in Salzburg in 2002. Her broad-ranging solo repertoire encompasses everything from baroque to contemporary avant-garde music. As a soloist, Joanna Kamenarska has appeared with orchestras such as the Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin, the Konzerthaus Orchestra Berlin, the Nürnberg Symphony Orchestra, the Polish Chamber Philharmonic, the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, the Hamburger Camerata, the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra as well as orchestras in Bulgaria and elsewhere. Her numerous musical partnerships have resulted in two CD recordings: the first was “Initio” with pianist Irina Georgieva, released by the Bulgarian label Gega New; in 2019 a duo album with pianist Moisès Ferández Via appeared on the label Urtext Classics in Tanglewood in the USA. Joanna Kamenarska plays a violin built by J. B. Guadagnini in 1740 (Ex-Flesch), on loan to her from a private donor. Joanna Kamenarska has lived in Hamburg since 2007, when she began a one-year appointment as concertmaster at the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra. In 2008 she became associate concertmaster at the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra. Since February 2018 she has been teaching in the orchestral studies programme at the Hamburg Academy of Music and Theatre.

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Kostas Malamis

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Yitong Guo

Yitong Guo was born in Lanzhou (China) and grew up in Beijing. He studied at the Juilliard School in New York, the Manhattan School of Music, the Berlin University of Arts as well as at the Mozarteum Salzburg. He is currently continuing his Konzertexamen at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg. At the same time, he is a teaching assistant for viola at HfMT Hamburg. His teachers and mentors include Thomas Riebl, Pinchas Zukerman, Hartmut Rohde, Anna Kreetta, Patinka Kopec, and Samuel Rhodes. Yitong Guo received the 1st prize at the International Clara Schumann Competition, the 2nd prize at the Hudson Valley String Competition, the Young Artist Award from the National Arts Centre in Canada, and 5th place at the International Max Rostal Competition. As a musician, he has participated in various festivals and masterclasses, such as the Ravinia Festival, the Yellow Barn Festival, the International Musicians Seminar Prussia Cove, and the Seiji Ozawa International Academy. Since 2020, Yitong Guo has been a violist in the Philharmonic State Orchestra Hamburg.

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Christine Hu

Christine Hu was born in Vienna in 1985. She studied with Tobias Kühne and Heinrich Schiff in Vienna, with Thomas Demenga and Rainer Schmidt (Hagen Quartet) in Basel as well as Thomas Grossenbacher in Zurich. She attended master courses with Steven Isserlis and Miklós Perényi, among others. She received scholarships from the Herbert von Karajan Foundation and the Thyll-Dürr Foundation and was supported by Yehudi Menuhin’s foundation “Live Music Now” and Villa Musica. In 2013 she was interim section leader of the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg. She has performed regularly with the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich and Camerata Bern and was a member of the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne before becoming a member of the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra in 2016. As the cellist of the trio oreade, Christine Hu has explored string trio literature extensively, winning the first prize at the International String Trio Competition in Munich in 2012 and making debuts at the Tonhalle Zurich in 2014 and at the Menuhin Festival in Gstaad in 2016, among others. The trio’s debut CD/Blu-Ray was released in 2015 by bmn-medien. The trio oreade has been playing three instruments built by Antonio Stradivari since the autumn of 2017, generously loaned to them by the Stradivari Foundation. Having grown up bilingually and under the influence of two different cultures – her parents are originally from Taiwan – Christine Hu feels that the search for balance and intercession is an essential part of her artistic life.

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Hannes Biermann

Hannes Biermann was born in Hamburg in 1980 and began playing cello at the age of eight. Later, he switched to the double bass and after an intensive year of coaching by Gerhard Kleinert (principal bass of the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra) he joined the National Youth Orchestra of Germany. His studies took him to Lübeck, Helsinki and Frankfurt / Main, where Christoph Schmidt was his teacher before graduation in 2008. Hannes Biermann was an intern at the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra, associate principal at the Lübeck Philharmonic and substitute principal at the Finnish Radio Symphony orchestra. After completing a limited engagement, he became first principal bass at the Wiesbaden State Orchestra and played regularly as a guest of the Frankfurt Museum Orchestra and the Mannheim National Theatre. Since 2014 Hannes Biermann has been a member of the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra.

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Michael Dorner

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