new bristol sinfonia

Michael Wendeberg

Michael Wendeberg was born in 1974 in Germany into a family of musicians. He began to play the piano at the age of five and to conduct at the age of thirteen. He was triple winner of the German national music youth competition "Jugend Musiziert" and, from 1993 on, studied piano with Bernd Glemser and Benedetto Lupo.

In 2000 he was laureate of the international Schubert competition in Graz and the music competition of the European broadcasting union in Lissabon and became pianist of the Ensemble Intercontemporain. There he worked intensely with great composers like György Kurtág, György Ligeti, Jonathan Harvey and Pierre Boulez.

Outside the Ensemble, he has played as a soloist with the Bemberger Sinfoniker, the radio orchestras of Freiburg, Frankfurt and Hamburg and the Berliner Philharmoniker. In 2003, he gave his debut recital at the Salzburg festival and in 2005 made his New York debut at the Lincoln Center with the Ligeti piano concerto with the Intercontemporain and Jonathan Nott.

At the same time, he began to study conducting. He has studied conducting with Toshiyuki Kamioka since 2005 and works at the opera house of Wuppertal in Germany.