Biography – Katrin Küsswetter
At the beginning of her career, Soprano Katrin Küsswetter focused on baroque music with Rosemarie Jakschitsch (Trossingen). She supplemented her training by taking part in several masterclasses with Richard Wistreich, Jessica Cash, Ingrid Figur, Anna Reynolds and Klesie Kelley-Moog. Soon she expanded her repertoire, however, under the tutelage of the renowned Birgit Ströbel-König (Nuremberg) and KS Claes-Håkan Ahnsjö (Munich and Stockholm). Her unusually broad repertoire spans from the early baroque to the contemporary. She has performed the premieres of a number of renowned contemporary composers. Her stage repertoire comprises such leading roles as Cleopatra in Handel’s Giulio Cesare, Konstanze in W.A. Mozart´s Abduction, Queen of the Night in Mozart´s The Magic Flute, Olympia in Offenbach´s The Tales of Hoffmann, and the role of Cunigonde in Bernstein´s Candide.
Her church music repertoire spans all the leading roles of the genre. Her concert repertoire also comprises most of the famous Concert-Arias by W.A. Mozart which fit her warm and lyric voice in an exceptional way. Meanwhile she´s made a name for herself with her unconventional interpretation of international songs. Not shy of testing and overcoming artistic boundaries, Katrin Küsswetter produces and arranges a broad musical repertoire, while collaborating with other musicians in refreshingly unconventional ensembles.
Katrin Küsswetter has participated in prestigious musical festivals such as the European Music Festival Stuttgart, the Tage für Alte Musik Innsbruck, the Easter Festival at Bayreuth and the Bayreuth Festival, where she was engaged over a number of years. She has worked with internationally renowned conductors, namely Hartmut Keil, Christoph U. Meyer and Sebastian Weigle. She has also performed with well-known period instrument ensembles such as the Neue Nürnberger Ratsmusik, La Banda, Augsburg, and La Ciaccona, Munich, and sings frequently with major orchestras such as the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra.
Numerous live television and radio recordings and lately livestreaming of her performances during the Covid-19 pandemia have documented her mastery of a staggeringly eclectic, virtuosic repertoire. After her overwhelming success with Mozart Concert-Arias at the Rieser Kulturtage (Hohenlohe) in 2018, a CD with this repertoire was released last year. In 2021 a recording of recently discovered secular cantatas, songs and arias by Franz Bühler is planned with the international Arsatius Consort under the baton of Prof. Herrmann Ullrich.
It is a pleasure to Katrin Küsswetter to teach singing at several institutes and to support students at all levels of education in workshops and masterclasses. She is member of the BDG (Bund Deutscher Gesangspädagogen) and the DTKV (Deutscher Tonkünstlerverband).