Georg Hamann

Violinist and violist Georg Hamann, born in Vienna in 1960, pursued his higher musical training at what is now the mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, studying violin with Michael Frischenschlager and then with Klaus Maetzl as well as viola with Hatto Beyerle, the latter two of whom were both members of the Alban Berg Quartet. He received his diploma with unanimous honours, following which Austria’s Minister of Science awarded him an honorary prize for exceptional artistic achievement. He was also privileged to attend master classes given by Max Rostal and William Primrose.

Hamann went on to teach at the University of Music and Drama Hanover as an assistant to Hatto Beyerle, and he also taught chamber music here at the mdw from 1999 to 2009. He has served as concertmaster of Haydn Sinfonietta Wien and first solo violist of the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, he has been a professor of violin and viola at the mdw since 2009, and he also heads a class for gifted students at the Johann Sebastian Bach Music School. He gives violin, viola, and chamber music master classes in Europe, Israel, and Japan on a regular basis and has additionally been invited to give courses as a guest at foreign universities and academies (in Alicante, Bucharest, Brasov, Cluj, Dublin, Yerevan, Helsinki, Lisbon, Ljubljana, Manchester, Minsk, Utrecht, Vilnius, Warsaw, Thessaloniki, and Turku).

Both as a violinist (modern and baroque) and as a violist, Hamann is a frequent guest at well-known festivals (Wien Modern, Styriarte Graz, the Edinburgh Festival, the Woodstock Mozart Festival, the Menuhin Festival Gstaad, the Nagano Festival in Japan, the Santo Domingo Festival, et al.).

Georg Hamann performed for ten years as a member of the renowned Arcus Ensemble Vienna, which mounted numerous concert tours through Europe, Japan, and the USA alongside their regular appearances at the Wiener Konzerthaus.

1998 saw Hamann join together with Ludwig Müller, Barna Kobori, and Christophe Pantillon to form the Aron Quartet, which was then invited by the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna to put on its own concert series as that institution’s quartet-in-residence. The quartet gave its “brilliant debut” (Der Standard) in Vienna just a few weeks after its founding, since which point it has numbered among Austria’s leading string quartets.

Hamann’s interest in chamber music has frequently given rise to new projects together with partners such as Bruno Canino, Philippe Entremont, Elisabeth Leonskaja, Oleg Maisenberg, Philippe Graffin, Erich Höbarth, Rudolf Koelman, Ernst Kovacic, Christian Tetzlaff, Vladimir Mendelssohn, Boris Pergamenschikow, Christoph Richter, Sharon Kam, Alois Brandhofer, Wenzel Fuchs, Michel Lethiec, Anna Caterina Antoniacci, and lldikó Raimondi, as well as with members of the Alban Berg Quartet.

In 1992, Georg Hamann’s activities as a chamber musician were recognised by Austria’s federal president with the Gold Medal for Services to the Republic of Austria.

Alongside numerous recordings of Viennese classical, romantic, and 20th-century chamber music works, Hamann’s CD productions also include 20th-century Austrian works for the viola, the movements with solo violin from Mozart’s Haffner Serenade as well as Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for the Camerata label in Japan, a complete recording of the works for violin and piano by Robert and Clara Schumann (on the Ars label), and a CD with Peter Seabourne’s Pietà (composed for Hamann) plus works by Benjamin Britten (on the Sheva label).