Thomas Demenga
“People used to either play modern music or Baroque music. I tried playing two [Bach] Suites and one or two modern works and the concerts became a phenomenon. I found that the audience's ears were greatly expanded and they became more open to both styles of music.”
Swiss cellist Thomas Demenga was born in 1954 in Berne. He studied with Walter Grimmer, Antonio Janigro, Leonard Rose and Mstislav Rostropovich, among others. Important chamber music influences were Claus Adam, Felix Galimir and Robert Mann at the Juilliard School in New York.
As an internationally renowned soloist, composer and teacher, Thomas Demenga is one of the most outstanding cellists of our time. He has performed at important festivals and concert venues around the globe and shared the stage with musicians such as Heinz Holliger, Gidon Kremer, Thomas Larcher and Thomas Zehetmair. He [...]
“People used to either play modern music or Baroque music. I tried playing two [Bach] Suites and one or two modern works and the concerts became a phenomenon. I found that the audience's ears were greatly expanded and they became more open to both styles of music.”
Swiss cellist Thomas Demenga was born in 1954 in Berne. He studied with Walter Grimmer, Antonio Janigro, Leonard Rose and Mstislav Rostropovich, among others. Important chamber music influences were Claus Adam, Felix Galimir and Robert Mann at the Juilliard School in New York.
As an internationally renowned soloist, composer and teacher, Thomas Demenga is one of the most outstanding cellists of our time. He has performed at important festivals and concert venues around the globe and shared the stage with musicians such as Heinz Holliger, Gidon Kremer, Thomas Larcher and Thomas Zehetmair. He has worked with conductors including Charles Dutoit, Claus Peter Flor, Heinz Holliger, Mstislav Rostropovich, Dennis Russell Davies, Wolfgang Sawallisch and Sándor Végh.
Thomas Demenga’s artistic work is shaped by an intense engagement with different historical eras and styles of interpretation and composition. He has a particular affinity with new music and is also active as an improviser. His work is documented on a number of ECM New Series recordings: in 2002 the label issued the final volume of a widely acclaimed series begun in the mid-1980s, in which Demenga turned his exploration of the six solo cello suites by Bach into a voyage of discovery, pairing them with works by modern composers such as Holliger, Carter, Veress, Zimmermann, Yun and Hosokawa. Taken together they constitute an impressive document of his evolution as a musician. Gramophone wrote: “the contemporary music on these discs confirms Demenga’s special interpretative gifts in this repertoire”.
Chonguri (2004) is an imaginative and wide-ranging collaboration with Thomas Larcher (piano) and Teodoro Anzellotti (accordion) which received the Deutsche Schallplattenpreis among other awards.
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