Jens Peter Maintz enjoys an outstanding reputation as a versatile soloist, highly sought-after chamber musician and committed cello teacher. He studied with David Geringas and has participated in masterclasses with Heinrich Schiff, Boris Pergamenschikow and Frans Helmerson.

In 1994 he won First Prize at the ARD international Music Competition, which had previously not been awarded to a cellist for 17 years.

As a soloist he has performed with conductors such as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Herbert Blomstedt and Dmitrij Kitajenko, appearing with orchestras including the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Den Haag Residenz-Orchester and Tokyo Symphony Orchestra.

He has served as a professor at the Berlin University of the Arts since 2004, and the Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía in Madrid since 2017.

Maintz has been principal cellist of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra since 2006, which he joined at the invitation of Claudio Abbado.

He received an ECHO Klassik award for his solo album of works by Bach, Dutilleux and Kodály, released on Sony Classical. Jens Peter Maintz plays the ‘Ex-Servais’ cello made by Giovanni Grancino in 1697.

Wilhelm Fitzenhagen came from a German musical family and, when only 20 years old, gained the position of solo cellist in the star orchestra of the time, the Dresden Philharmonic. In 1870, Liszt was once more in action, offering the young musician a prestigious position in his home town of Weimar, but by then Fitzenhagen had already become a professor at the Moscow Conservatory.

He gained the reputation of being the best cello teacher in Russia, became a close acquaintance of Tchaikovsky, and later took part in the first performance of both his string quartets and later his Piano Trio. In 1877, Tchaikovsky dedicated the exceedingly popular Rococo Variations for cello and orchestra to him, but this placed a strain on their friendship. Fitzenhagen played the work with great success, but carried out so many alterations – not only in the solo part – that Tchaikovsky is reputed to have remarked ‘The idiot has changed everything!’ The original version has later been reconstructed, but today one nearly always hears the version with Fitzenhagen’s ‘improvements’.

The five Concert Waltzes for four cellos by Fitzenhagen were composed in the 1880s, but were apparently not published during his lifetime. They make such prolonged use of high registers that as a listener one sometimes thinks one is listening to a scorching hot, all-embracing mega string quartet!

Karl Aage Rasmussen