Athletic. In October, Emanuel Roch found out that his application for a scholarship from the “Young Art and New Paths” program had been successful. He gets 5000 euros from the Bavarian State Ministry for Science and Art. Now he has until the end of the year to bag his project. To do this, the 24-year-old has to submit the complete plan to the authorities – his concert program. Roch, a music student majoring in piano at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Munich, wants to initiate his own ten-part classical series.
Perhaps the biggest challenge: “Especially in Munich it’s not that easy to find a suitable room because most organizers plan years in advance.” For the opening concert, however, Roch has already booked the venue: the Max Planck Hall of the Academic Choral Society in Munich. On Saturday, December 17, the young pianist will perform works by the great romantic song composers Franz Schubert and Hugo Wolf together with his fellow student, the tenor Eric Price, under the title “An die Geliebte”.
Eric Price started out in the Tölz Boys’ Choir, and today the young tenor sings a broad repertoire.
(Photo: Michael Hartmann)
It is not the first time that the two musicians have performed together, most recently the duo made their debut at the Filharmonia Romana in Rome and performed a song recital at Schloss Elmau. Eric Price, born in 1995, is the recipient of the “Fritz Wunderlich Scholarship” and a scholarship holder of the “Oscar and Vera Ritter Foundation”. He began his vocal and musical training at the age of five with the Tölzer Boys’ Choir. Later he had his tenor voice trained by Hartmut Elbert, among others. Price is also a graduate of the lied class of Christian Gerhaher and Gerold Huber, already has a masters in concert singing and has worked as a soloist with conductors such as Kirill Petrenko and Philippe Herreweghe. The tenor is currently studying the baroque cello with the broad repertoire at the Hochschule.
As a young musician in the classical field, you should be broadly positioned anyway, says his duet partner Emanuel Roch. Everyone at the university became even more aware of this during the tough phase of the pandemic. The “Young Art and New Ways” scholarship program supports artists who are completing their final year of study at an art college or comparable educational institution or who have completed their studies within the past five years.
Emanuel Roch, winner of the International Chopin Competition in Hanover, wants to invest his 5,000 euros in a “sustainable” series of concerts, for which he is now bringing fellow students and friends on board. He himself will give a solo evening and play a piano duo with a Berlin pianist. Not all contracts are ready to be signed yet, but he can already announce another concert: on March 1, the violinist Tassilo Probst will play in the Rubinstein Hall of Munich’s Steinway House.
“To the Beloved”, song recital with Eric Price and Emanuel Roch, Sat., Dec. 17, 7.30 p.m., Max-Planck-Saal of the Akademisches Liederverein Munich, Ledererstraße 5, free admission, reservations on Tel. 0162/3807610, email to [email protected] or www.eventbrite.com