INTERVIEW
The most inspiring composer: Beethoven. Aside from the fact that we have the same birthday, his works have touched me more than those of any other composer.
The first piece of music you fell in love with: Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1. I was five years old when I first dared to ask my father who had written this piece that our living room resounded with so often on Sundays.
What would you do if you weren’t a musician? I would be a tax inspector or a meter maid. In other words: I’m only and entirely a musician. It’s a principle of life for me.
What makes a “perfect” concert? The moments of ‘imperfection’ that cannot be planned, moments of the greatest emotional inspiration and connectedness on a musical level.
What CDs would you want with you on a desert island? Beethoven: Waldstein Sonata with Gilels; Wagner: Tristan und Isolde with Flagstad, Melchior, and Reiner; Bach: The Art of the Fugue with Glenn Gould on organ and piano; Debussy: Complete Works for Piano with Gieseking.
BIOGRAPHY
Cellist Stefan Faludi was born in 1976 in Neuss. He began his musical education with Prof. Klaus Heitz in Hannover and subsequently studied with Prof. Wolfgang Boettcher in Berlin, where he finished his degree with distinction in 2002.
Stefan Faludi has won numerous first prizes in competitions, including at the German national competition Jugend musiziert, the International Concerto Competition in Greensboro, USA, the International Chamber Music Competition Charles Hennen in Heerlen, Netherlands, and the Cello Ensemble Competition in Beauvais, France.
He has toured as a soloist in Germany, the Netherlands, North Africa and the US, and has performed the major concertos of Haydn, Boccherini, Beethoven, Lalo, Saint-Saëns, Schumann, Brahms, Dvořák, and Gulda under conductors such as Dennis Russell Davies, Roberto Paternostro, and others. He has also performed the German premiere of Johan de Meij’s Casanova.
Along with appearances in radio and television productions, Stefan Faludi has recorded CDs with works by Dvořák, Saint-Saëns and de Meij.
As a chamber musician, Stefan Faludi has performed at the Rheingau Music Fesival, the Schleswig-Holstein Festival and other festivals in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Ludwigsburg, Aix-en-Provence, Bourglinster, and at the Alte Oper Frankfurt and the Berlin Philharmonic. He has also performed at festivals in Africa and East Asia.
Stefan is a founding member of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and is committed to participating regularly in projects with the Berlin Philharmonic and the Deutsche Sinfonie Orchester Berlin. He was a fellowship recipient of the German National Merit Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes), and was awarded the Lions Prize of the city of Baden-Baden in 2000.
He plays a Bernadel, élève de Lupot cello, dated 1868.
