Biography – Katrin Küsswetter
With her soft, versatile and extremely virtousic colouratura soprano, Katrin Küsswetter has made an outstanding name for herself on the major stages of Europe. Exhibiting a rare musicality, virtuosity and versatility at the very onset of her career, Katrin Küsswetter began performing with early music, and quickly expanded her repertoire to encompass centuries of European art music, from Baroque to Modern.
A regular guest soloist on international concert and opera stages, she performed at the Ansbach Bach Week, the Stuttgart Bach Festival, the Innsbruck Early Music Festival and the Balthasar Neumann Music Festival. She has also played smaller leading roles such as the „First Lehrbub“ (in „The Mastersingers of Nuremberg“) and „Hirtenknabe“ (in „Tannhäuser“) at the world-renowned Bayreuth Festival for multiple seasons.
Working with conductors such as Helmut Rilling, René Jacobs, Lars Ulrik Mortensen, Hartmut Keil, Christoph U. Meyer and Sebastian Weigle, she regularly performs with orchestras such as the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, La Ciaccona Munich, La Banda Augsburg, Barock _Plus and many others.
Katrin Küsswetter’s stage partners include the multiple Opus Klassik prizewinner and exceptional flautist Maurice Steger, the renowned baroque violinist and founding member of Musica Alta Ripa Anne Röhrig, along with internationally sought-after singers such as Tilman Lichdi and Jukka Rasilainen.
Katrin Küsswetter is clearly open to new musical territory. She crosses the stylistic boundaries between different musical genres at regular intervals. This is a key focus of her two ensembles, ‘Barocke Sinneslust’ and ‘Classic meets Jazz’. With her novel concert programmes and ensemble line-ups, she opens up new and exciting worlds of sound to younger and older audiences alike. A musician with a proactive social outlook, she is also a dedicated educator, who regularly takes time out from her busy performance schedule to engage with children and young people through her educational projects.
Her work is frequently grant-aided by the Bavarian Ministry of Science and the Arts, the German Music Council and the Jazz Department of the Bavarian Music Council.
A core focus of her stage repertoire is the virtuoso coloratura roles of W. A. Mozart (including Queen of the Night from „The enchanting flute“ and Konstanze from „The Abduction“). In 2019 she recorded and released a CD collection of W. A. Mozart’s greatest concert and opera arias. The recordings exhibit a sparkling clear and warm timbre that spans her entire vocal range, coupled with her breathtakingly effortless virtuosity and vocal precision.
Her highlyacclaimed CD ‘Arias & Motets – Last Heroes’ was released at the end of 2023. It is the first recording of the entire ‘Otto Arie Sacre’ oeuvre of the early Italian classical composer, Giuseppe Giordani. The recording was funded by a scholarship from the German Music Council and was recorded on the Leipzig label Rondeau®.
Her virtuosity and versatility, along with her artistic vision and uniqueness have also been evidenced in numerous live recordings to date, which have been broadcast on European TV (BR, WDR, SWR and Arte).