Mosel Music Festival: Franziska Hölscher & Johanna Summer

Intimate Dialogues

On this special concert evening in the baroque hall of the Machern Monastery – renowned for its outstanding acoustics – two exceptional artists will create an extremely exciting format. Here, directly composed music meets improvisation. An auditory experience full of surprises and vibrant closeness.

A piece of music unfolds – and in the next moment, it is expanded upon: Johanna Summer captures energy, motifs, and colors, spontaneously generating something new. Together with Franziska Hölscher, a musical dialogue emerges between the original and transformation, between history and the present, between violin and piano. In search of music that comes into being from the moment and can be played spontaneously with others, Johanna Summer found her way to jazz. Initially starting with classical piano lessons, she came into contact with free improvisation during her bachelor's studies at the Hochschule in Dresden in a course by the Free Jazz legend Günter Baby Sommer. Fascinated by the immediacy of this music, she began to give solo concerts, initially drawing from the canon of the "Great American Songbook," yet always with an open and flexible playing attitude and without a predetermined setlist. Gradually, she turned more and more towards her musical roots, seeking ways to place classical music into an improvisational context. Her first program "Schumann Kaleidoscope" was nominated for the German Jazz Award in 2021.

Communicative sensitivity and a rich palette of sound characterize the playing of violinist Franziska Hölscher – a perfect dialogue partner, indeed. Passionately, Franziska Hölscher advocates for compositions from the 20th and 21st centuries. At the same time, she regularly bridges to compositions from the Baroque period, to which she gives fresh interpretations, reflecting her instinct for the new. From the beginning of her career, collaboration with colleagues – Martha Argerich, Kit Armstrong, Martin Helmchen, Maximilian Hornung, Dorothee Oberlinger, Daniel Müller-Schott, Benjamin Appl – has held a firm place in her repertoire. As a soloist, she performs in Germany with the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern, Ensemble Resonanz, Stuttgarter Kammerorchester, and Württembergisches Kammerorchester Heilbronn. Franziska Hölscher is the artistic director of "Klangbrücken" at the Konzerthaus Berlin, the Feldafing Music Days (together with Kit Armstrong), and the "Fränkischen Sommer."

Franziska Hölscher – violin
Johanna Summer – piano