Chamber music "coup"

The content on this page was translated automatically.

For University President Jan Philipp Sprick, it is a real "coup" that the HfMT has to announce: The internationally renowned violinist Abel Tomàs Realp has been appointed as the new professor of the HfMT's Chamber Music department. Born in Spain, he will take over from Prof. Niklas Schmidt, who has taught chamber music and cello at the Outer Alster since 1987, at the start of the 2025 winter semester.

Abel Tomàs has the ideal qualifications for his appointment. His chamber music training as a violinist was strongly influenced by Walter Levin (LaSalle Quartet), Rainer Schimdt (Hagen Quartet) and György Kurtág. At the age of 16, he became a founding member of the renowned Cuarteto Casals, a chamber ensemble with which he has maintained a very intensive artistic activity from 1997 to the present day, with concerts in the best European venues and tours through Latin America, the USA and Asia. Since 2004, the quartet has recorded exclusively for Harmonia Mundi, a record label with which it has made around twenty recordings to date. The Cuarteto Casals was awarded the National Music Prize in 2006, the Barcelona City Prize in 2005 and the Catalan National Culture Prize in 2016.

As a soloist, he has performed with various orchestras under the direction of internationally renowned conductors. Parallel to his concert career, he developed his teaching activities as a chamber music professor at the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya from 2003 to 2025 and is a visiting professor in The Hague and Florence, at the ECMA (European Chamber Music Academy) and at ProQuartet in Paris.

As far as his new place of work is concerned, Hamburg is not only one of the most beautiful metropolises in Europe for Abel Tomàs alongside his native city of Barcelona, but also connects him with incisive events that affected his later career as an internationally renowned musician. "As fate would have it, my professional career with my string quartet Quarteto Casals is in some way linked to Hamburg. We won the Brahms Competition here 23 years ago, which took place in the building of the Hochschule. That was my first visit to this school in March 2002. Over the years, the quartet has been regularly invited to perform at the Laeiszhalle and the Elbphilharmonie - right up to the present day."
One aspect that goes beyond music is particularly important to the 45-year-old: respectful behavior towards fellow students, teachers, composers and music as a whole. There is no doubt that this should be reciprocal.

The HfMT is very much looking forward to working with Abel Tomàs.