Wolfgang Holzmair

Baritone, Wolfgang Holzmair holds a Diploma from the Vienna University of Economics. He studied singing at the Vienna Academy of Music with Prof. Hilde Rössel-Majdan and Lied with Erik Werba, winning prizes at several international vocal competitions. After engagements in Bern and Gelsenkirchen Mr. Holzmair appeared at many major opera houses such as Vienna, Lyon, Berlin, Leipzig, Lisbon, London, Munich among others. In 1993 he made his debut at the Salzburg Festival, and has been a guest at numerous important festivals.

Mr. Holzmair has performed with orchestras such as Vienna Smphony, Berlin Philharmonic, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Cleveland Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Israel Philharmonic, English Chamber Orchestra, Concentrus Musicus, Chamber Orchestra of Europe conducted by N. Harnoncourt, R. Norrington, S. Ozawa, K. Nagano, C. v. Dohnanyi, R. Chailly and F. Welser-Möst. He has numerous CD-recordings to his credit: Lieder by Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Wolf, Eisler and Weill. He is presently a guest professor at the Royal College of Music in London.

In a recent appearance at Lincoln Center's "Mostly Mozart" series, Mr. Holzmair garnared the following comments in the New York Times:

Clearly, the fruitful partnership between Mr. Holzmair and Ms. Cooper is enlivened by their different yet complementary temperaments. He is an intensely focused singer who uses his alluring voice with its husky chest tones and plaintive tenorial top, as well as his keen intelligence, to animate the texts and stories of the songs he sings. She is a refined and sensitive pianist who favors delicacy of touch and subtlety of gesture. His dramatic fervor emboldens her playing; her refinement moves him to pull back some, to let a gentle phrase simply float and spin. The hall was packed for their Sunday recital, a model of integrated programming that began with five Schubert songs all dealing with imagery of the moon, the stars and night. In a rapturous performance of "Nachthymne," Mr. Holzmair seemed in a spell, casting his eyes downward or looking vacantly into the distance, yet projecting with intensity every word and image.

After the Schubert set, to maintain the mood, Mr. Holzmair remained onstage, seated in the back, as Ms. Cooper played a beguiling performance of Schubert's melancholic late Klavierstuck No. 2, D. 946. Then came a rousing account of a Mozart rarity, a little German cantata for voice and piano. After more Schubert and Mozart, the second half ended with an involving performance of four songs from Mahler's "Des Knaben Wunderhorn."

That the excellent musicians of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra were excited to be making their festival debut on Monday was clear from buoyant and technically deft accounts of the Overture to Mozart's "Impresario," which began the concert, and Schubert's youthful Symphony No. 3, which ended it. Their dynamic conductor is Joseph Swensen, who exemplifies the mingling of cultural traditions so common today: born in New York in 1960, he is of Norwegian and Japanese descent, makes his home in Copenhagen and directs a Scottish ensemble. He and Ms. Cooper proved sympathetic partners in a bracing yet never pushed, graceful yet never sentimental performance of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 18 in B flat.

Of special interest was Mr. Holzmair's compelling account of Mahler's "Songs of a Wayfarer," with Mr. Swensen conducting an ingenious arrangement of the orchestral score for 10-piece chamber ensemble (including piano and harmonium) by Schoenberg. Fisher Hall was far too big a place for this work. Still, the concert exemplified the type of imaginative programming visiting ensembles have been bringing in recent years to the festival. The resident orchestra should take note.