First prize, the audience prize, the music prize of the Bonn Rotary Club and a one-year scholarship from the German Foundation for Musical Life are the impressive results of cellist Valentino Worlitzsch‘s participation in the 2016 German Music Competition in Bonn.

Born in 1989 in Hannover, he attended his first cello and piano lessons at the age of four. As a cellist and pianist, soloist and chamber musician, he was already a prize-winner of national and international competitions such as the International Grotrian Steinweg Piano Competition during his early teenage years, and was awarded the Eduard Söring Prize from the German Foundation for Musical Life for his outstanding achievements on both instruments.

Since then, he has amassed numerous national and international awards. In addition to receiving first prize at the German Music Competition, he won first prize and two special awards at the International Music Competition ‘Pacem in terris’ in Bayreuth and second prize and the audience award at the ‘Ton und Erklärung’ Competition. He was awarded special prizes at the Grand Prix Emanuel Feuermann in Berlin and at the Leoš Janácek International Competition in Brno. Furthermore, he was a semi-finalist at the ARD International Music Competition in Munich as well as at the prestigious International Tchaikovsky Competition in St. Petersburg and at the International Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels and was distinguished as the best participant ex aequo at the Pierre Fournier Award in London.

Valentino Worlitzsch graduated under Bernhard Gmelin in Hamburg and Michel Strauss in Paris. In 2013, his studies continued with a master’s and performance degree under Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt in Weimar, where he has also been teaching as Schmidt’s assistant since 2015. Parallel to his cello studies, he also studied piano under Karl-Heinz Kämmerling and Johanna Wiedenbach as well as conducting under Nicolás Pasquet.

He was further inspired through master classes and lessons with Wolfgang Boettcher, László Fenyő, David Geringas, Frans Helmerson, Laurence Lesser, Jens Peter Maintz, Johannes Moser, Philippe Muller and Wen-Sinn Yang.

As a soloist, Valentino Worlitzsch has performed with, among others, the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn, the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker, the Munich Chamber Orchestra, the Munich Radio Orchestra, the Nuremberg Symphonic Orchestra and the Royal Chamber Orchestra of Wallonia, and has already played at notable venues such as the Berliner Philharmonie, the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, the Wigmore Hall in London and the St. Petersburg Philharmonia. In addition, he passionately devotes himself to chamber music – his partners include Elisabeth Brauß, Volker Jacobsen, Nils Mönkemeyer, Eldar Nebolsin, Christopher Park, Natalia Prishepenko, Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt and William Youn. He is also a regular guest at renowned festivals such as the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the Ludwigsburg Festival and the Heidelberger Frühling.

Valentino Worlitzsch has been a longstanding scholarship recipient of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation, the German Foundation for Musical Life, the Oscar and Vera Ritter Foundation and the Yehudi Menuhin Foundation ‘Live Music Now’; he was a Masefield Scholarship recipient of the Alfred Toepfer Foundation.

As an award winner of the Competition of German Musical Instruments Fund, he has played on a cello labeled ‘Grancino’ (Roman school, 18th century) since 2015, graciously lent to the trust by a private owner.

www.valentino-worlitzsch.com