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8/25/2008 | Claudia Barainsky, Irina ...

Claudia Barainsky

German soprano Claudia Barainsky studied music in her native city, at the Berlin University of the Arts, where her teachers were Ingrid Figur, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Aribert Reimann.

In 1994 she debuted in the lead role of Reimann's Melusine at the Dresden State Opera House. Since then she has performed at opera houses in Amsterdam, Avignon, Berlin, Brussels, Cologne, Dresden, Hamburg, Leipzig, Munich, Stuttgart and Tokyo, as well as at festivals in Bayreuth and Salzburg. Over the past two years she has performed in a number of lead and solo roles: Konstanze in Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio) at the Semperoper in Dresden; Marie in Die Soldaten (The Soldiers) at the RuhrTriennale; in Orff's Carmina Burana at the Tonhalle with the Zurich Orchestra, conducted by John Nelson; in Berg's Lulu with the Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Heinz Holliger; in Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in Hamburg; and in Zemlinsky's Lyric Symphony at the Basel Sinfonietta.

In the coming period she will be again appearing in the roles of Marie in Zimmermann's Die Soldaten at the Lincoln Center Festival in New York, Cleofide at the Semperoper, and Aphrodite.

Ms Barainsky has collaborated with conductors such as Gerd Albrecht, Herbert Blomstedt, Sylvain Cambreling, Paul Daniel, Alessandro De Marchi, Michael Gielen, Daniel Harding, Philippe Herreweghe, Marek Janowski, Zubin Mehta, Ingo Metzmacher, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Christian Thielemann, Edo de Waart and Lothar Zagrosek; she has performed with the Bamberg Symphony, the Berlin, Dresden, Munich and London Philharmonics, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, German Symphony Orchestra in Berlin, the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, North German Radio Symphony Orchestra in Hamburg, the NHK-Orchester, Orchestre de Paris, Klangforum Wien, the Ensemble Modern and Ensemble Intercontemporain.

She has recorded for radio, television and record companies. Kurtág's "Botschaften des verstorbenen Fräuleins R. V. Trussova (Messages of the Late R. V. Trussova, recorded at the Salzburg Festival 2004) as well as Zimmermann's Die Soldaten (production by David Pountney for the 2006 RuhrTriennale) have been awarded the German music critics' prize "Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik".

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Irina Puryshinskaja

Irina Puryshinskaja was born in Moscow and studied at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory under Professor Gleb Axelrod, where she completed studies in chamber music, piano accompaniment and solo piano. She continued her studies in Germany under Professor Karin Merle at the University of Music Cologne and under Professor Hartmut Höll at the University of Music Karlsruhe.

In 1996 she In 1996 she received a special prize for the best piano accompaniment at the XII International Robert Schumann Competition in Zwickau. That same year she was awarded second prize at the "Citta di Senigallia" International Piano Competition in Italy. In 2000 she won third place at the IV International Competition "Franz Schubert and Music of Modern Times" in Graz in the category of Duo for Voice and Piano. She has won a number of international prizes with soprano Evgenia Grekova (international competitions: Richard Strauss in Stuttgart, Fransisco Vinas in Barcelona, Mozart und Belcanto in Passau, Debut de Meran in Meran and UNISA in Pretoria).

Ms Puryshinskaja has performed at solo recitals, chamber concerts and singing recitals in Germany (including at the Liederhalle Stuttgart, Cologne Philharmonic Orchestra, Gasteig Munich, the Ruhr Piano Festival, Bad Kissingen Summer Festival), Belgium, Austria, Switzerland and Italy. She has been on tour through the former Soviet Union, in the Middle East, South America and China. She has participated in numerous recordings for German radio stations such as WDR, MDR, SWR and German Radio Berlin. Together with tenor Bernhard Berchtold, in 2006 she recorded the complete song cycles of Franz Schubert for the label AVI-Music as part of the Ruhr Piano Festival. Since February 2000 she has been a piano professor at the Vorarlberg Conservatory in Feldkirch, Austria.

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