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 „inperfection“ that you can’t plan, moments of the greatest emotional inspiration and connectedness on a musical level.
Which are your Desert Island Discs? Beethoven: Waldstein Sonata with Gilels; Wagner: Tristan and 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 in the German national competition Jugend musiziert, at the International Concerto Comptetion in Greensboro, USA, at the International Chamber Music Competition Charles Hennen in Heerlen, Netherlands, and at the Cello Ensemble Competition in Beauvais, France.
He has toured as a soloist in Germany, the Netherlands, North Africa and the USA, and has performed the major concertos of Haydn, Boccherini, Beethoven, Lalo, Saint-Saens, Schumann, Brahms, Dvorak and Gulda under conductors such as Dennis Russell Davies, Roberto Paternostro, among others, In addition, he performed the German premiere of Johan de Meij’s Casanova.
Alongside appearances in radio and television productions for ZDF, ARTE, NDR, HR, SWR, SfB and for German classical radio, Stefan Faludi has recorded CDs with works by Dvorak, Saint-Saens 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, as well as at the Alte Oper Frankfurt and the Berlin Philharmonic, and, lastly, in Africa and East Asia.
Stefan is a founding member of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and is committed to participate 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. Stefan Faludi plays a Bernadel, élève de Lupot cello, dated 1868.
