Anne-Maria Hölscher & Florian Hölscher
Biography Anne-Maria Hölscher & Florian Hölscher
Anne-Maria Hölscher
Classical accordionist Anne-Maria Hölscher studied in Weimar, Trossingen and Toronto (Canada) alongside Claudia Buder, Hugo Noth and Joseph Macerollo. She is also a former scholarship holder, awarded by the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes (German Academic Scholarship Foundation), the Deutsche Bank Stiftung (Deutsche Bank Foundation) and the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service). Furthermore, Ms Hölscher has won prizes at several music competitions. Her wide-range solo repertoire spans the last five centuries. Anne-Maria Hölscher regularly performs with orchestras, chamber music ensembles and acclaimed groups for contemporary music: Collegium Novum Zurich, Ensemble Ascolta, Klangforum Heidelberg to name but a few. She regularly gives recitals as a soloist and chamber musician at international music festivals, including Eclat Festival Stuttgart, the European Music Festival Stuttgart, the International Summer Course Darmstadt, Lucerne Festival, Schwetzingen Festival, Days for New Music Weingarten, Transit Leuven, Ultraschall Berlin and Witten Days for New Chamber Music.
Collaborations with composers such as Marc Andre, Nikolaus Brass, Klaus Huber, Márton Illés, Johannes Kalitzke, Fabien Lévy, Oliver Schneller and many others have culminated in world premieres of works featuring accordion solos and ensemble music that includes accordion scoring. Anne-Maria Hölscher has held a professorship for accordion and chamber music at the Lucerne School of Music since 2010; she enthusiastically shares her instrument’s expressive diversity with young accordionists. Hölscher leads the Annual Accordion Conference in Lucerne to promote further training and collaboration between teachers. Alongside Hugo Noth – a pioneer of the instrument – Hölscher curates the ‘Colours of the Accordion’ YouTube channel, which showcases how the accordion has developed in terms of playing technique and tonal variety over the last few decades. Nestled within this channel, Anne-Maria Hölscher and a group of like-minded people have launched a new project entitled ‘For young and old’, which seeks to create a collection of pedagogically suitable music that aims to inspire both teachers and (very) young players of the accordion. Anne-Maria Hölscher has made recordings for various ARD broadcasters (HR ‒ Hessian Radio, SWR ‒ Southwest German Radio, WDR ‒ West German Radio, etc.) and a series of CD productions as a soloist and chamber musician. She has released an album with French Suites by Johann Sebastian Bach on the Organum Classics label (OGM 281096).
Florian Hölscher
studied with Robert Levin, Michel Béroff, and Pierre-Laurent Aimard in Freiburg, Paris, and Cologne. He also received significant inspiration from the conductor Peter Eötvös. His repertoire includes solo and chamber music works from the 17th to the 21st century. He is particularly passionate about premieres of new works. For many years, Florian Hölscher has enjoyed intensive collaborations with contemporary composers, particularly Marco Stroppa, Alberto Posadas, and Jonathan Harvey. Between 2015 and 2018, Alberto Posadas wrote the 80-minute solo cycle "Erinnerungsspuren" (Traces of Memory) for him, which was performed at the WDR Cologne, the Luxembourg Philharmonic, and the "Wien Modern" festival at the Konzerthaus, among others.
As a soloist, he has worked with conductors such as Peter Eötvös, Christopher Hogwood, David Zinman, Francois-Xavier Roth, Kent Nagano, Sylvain Cambreling, and Johannes Kalitzke. The pianist is a founding member of the Stuttgart-based ensemble Ascolta, with which he regularly performs at many major contemporary music festivals and has built a repertoire of over 300 ensemble works.
Since 2018, Florian Hölscher has held a piano professorship at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Frankfurt am Main.
