A wealth of excellent reviews plus first prize, audience prize and three more special prizes at the 2008 ARD Music Competition prove that Sebastian Manz is among the best of his generation anywhere in the world.
Active in concert life for many years, he welcomes new challenges as a soloist and in the chamber-music field.
From December 3 to 12, Sebastian Manz is touring with the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie under the direction of Simon Gudenz in Minden, Herford, Bad Salzuflen, Detmold, Wilhelmshaven and Paderborn. The programme features Mozart's Clarinet Concerto
The virtuoso concerto by Julius Rietz (1812–1877), a close friend of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and conductor at the Leipzig Gewandhaus, is a true rediscovery for the clarinet repertoire. Sebastian Manz played it for the first time on November 10 and 11 in Solingen and Remscheid respectively with the Bergisch Symphony Orchestra conducted by Peter Kuhn.
Sebastian Manz premiered Vito Zuraj's “Concerto for clarinet” in Saarbrücken. The musicians of the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie have awarded Zuraj the Special Prize for Composition, thereby commissioning a work for large orchestra from him in 2010.
During his matinée concert in Osnabrück, Sebastian Manz received the Osnabrück Music Prize, the first such prizewinner to be allowed to enter his name into the city's “Golden Book”.
The top prize in the clarinet division of the ARD Competition has been awarded for the first time in 40 years: Sebastian Manz has won first prize and the audience prize as well! More information at www.br-online.de/br-klassik/ard-musikwettbewerb
Sebastian Manz will be deputy solo clarinettist from the coming season (08/09) in the Lübeck Philharmonic Orchestra!
Duo Riul has won the 2008 German Music Competition in Bonn in the “Clarinet & Piano Duo” category and has been accepted into the nationwide programme of “Concerts by Young Artists”! They have also received a bursary from Germany's Stiftung Musikleben foundation and a special prize from the Marie-Luise-Stiftung. Concerts and festival appearances are to follow.
“… He lets the mood topple into grotesque squeaking, gives helter-skelter cascades of notes sense and meaning and in his solo cadenzas enters into a furious dialogue with himself. That generates a power of suggestion that nobody in the Europasaal of the Osnabrückhalle arts centre can resist.”
Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung, February 17, 2009