Matthias Winckhler

Matthias Winckhler was born in Munich in 1990. He began his musical training at the Bavarian Academy of Singing before studying at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg with Andreas Macco, as well as in Wolfgang Holzmair’s song class. He also took part in masterclasses with Matthias Goerne, Markus Hinterhäuser, Graham Johnson, Christa Ludwig, Malcolm Martineau, Bejun Mehta, Michele Pertusi, Rudolf Piernay, Peter Schreier, Bo Skovhus and Breda Zakotnik. He was the recipient of scholarships from the Walter and Charlotte Hamel Foundation and the Walter Kaminsky Foundation.

In 2017 Matthias Winckhler was awarded the Trude Eipperle Rieger Award. He received first prize and the special prize from the Mozarteum Foundation at the 2014 Salzburg International Mozart Competition. He was also a prizewinner at the 2012 International Bach Competition in Leipzig, the 2010 National Singing Competition in Berlin and the 2014 International Schubert Competition in Dortmund.

Concert engagements have taken him to numerous prestigious festivals, such as the Salzburg Festival, Kissinger Sommer, Bachfest Leipzig, the Rheingau Musik Festival, the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, the Thüringer Bachwochen and the Mozartwoche in Salzburg. He has worked with conductors including Hansjörg Albrecht, Howard Arman, Peter Dijkstra, Hans Graf, Matthew Halls, Pablo Heras-Casado, René Jacobs, Risto Joost, Andrew Manze, Riccardo Minasi, Jordi Savall, Masaaki Suzuki, Robin Ticciati and Jos van Veldhoven, and performed in concert with ensembles such as the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Bach Collegium Japan, Camerata Salzburg, La Capella Reial de Catalunya, the Bavarian Radio Choir, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, the MDR Symphony Orchestra, the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, the Munich Bach Choir, the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra and the Vienna Philharmonic.

From 2015 to 2018 he was a member of the ensemble at the State Opera in Hanover, where his roles included Count Almaviva (Le nozze di Figaro), Albert (Werther), Belcore (L’elisir d’amore) and Tom (The English Cat). Other operatic highlights include the role of Don Fernando in Beethoven’s Fidelio with the Basel Chamber Orchestra under Giovanni Antonini, with performances at the Theater an der Wien and at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, and Frank in Korngold’s Die tote Stadt at the Théâtre du Capitole de Toulouse.

Song is a particular focus of his work and he appears in recital with Marcelo Amaral, Bernadette Bartos, Tobias Krampen, Verena Metzger, Akemi Murakami and Jan Philip Schulze. In the field of contemporary music, he has worked with composers such as Nikolaus Brass, Friedrich Cerha, Manfred Trojahn and Gerhard Wimberger and has been involved in numerous world premieres.