Sophia Jaffé
performed for the first time at the age of seven in the chamber music hall of the Berlin Philharmonic. Born into a family of musicians in Berlin, her parents were her first teachers, after which she studied with Herman Krebbers in Amsterdam and Stephan Picard at the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin. Today she is a professor at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts.

Sophia Jaffé has won numerous prizes at prestigious international competitions such as the German Music Competition and the Concours Reine Elisabeth in Brussels. Her solo career includes concerts with orchestras such as the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the chamber orchestras of Stuttgart, Munich, and Heilbronn, the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, the Sinfonieorchester Basel, and the Czech Philharmonic Prague.

She collaborates with conductors such as Marek Janowski, Mark Elder, Dennis Russell Davies, Michael Sanderling, Krzysztof Urbański, and Thomas Guggeis. Her wide-ranging repertoire ranges from the standard literature to world premieres such as the violin concerto Words of the Cross (2010) by Slavomír Hořínka and a CD recording of John Casken’s Violin Concerto (1995) with Markus Stenz and the Hallé Orchestra Manchester.

Also interested in rarely-heard repertoire, she has performed the late Romantic Violin Concerto (1909) by Erich Jacques Wolff, a composer ostracized during the time of the Third Reich, and recorded a violin concerto by Emil von Reznicek with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Marcus Bosch in cooperation with Deutschlandradio Kultur. In addition, she performs concertos by Mozart‘s contemporaries such as Josef Mysliveček and Antonio Rosetti.

An equally passionate chamber musician, Sophia Jaffé frequently designs interesting concert programs featuring various ensembles and has been performing in a duo with pianist Björn Lehmann in concerts and at festivals such as the Rheingau Musikfestival and the Bachfest Leipzig for over twenty years.

Björn Lehmann
performs as a soloist and as a chamber musician in various ensembles, cultivating a special interest in new music in both areas. Concert tours take him to most European countries, Japan, South Korea, China, and Latin America. He regularly performs at numerous international festivals, including the Spring Festivals in Tokyo and Seoul.

He studied first in Hamburg with Peter-Jürgen Hofer and Ralf Nattkemper, in Lausanne with Fausto Zadra, and then at the Berlin University of the Arts with Klaus Hellwig. He has also received important artistic inspiration from Leonard Hokanson, Robert Levin, Ferenc Rados, Zoltán Kocsis, members of the Amadeus Quartet, Hartmut Höll, and Irwin Gage, among others.

His commitment to new music has led him to collaborate with composers such as Friedrich Goldmann, Arnulf Herrmann, and Mathias Spahlinger. In his concert programs, he often features traditional and contemporary repertoire alongside one another.

Since 2009 he has collaborated with pianist Norie Takahashi in frequent concerts as the PianoDuo Takahashi | Lehmann which, in its concert programs, often sheds light on the transcription repertoire, among other areas.

He has performed with violinist Sophia Jaffé in numerous concerts and festivals for more than twenty years. As a duo as well as in larger ensembles, they present a highly varied repertoire that ranges from Bach to the modern era. Lehmann has made radio and television recordings with numerous German and international radio stations and has released several CDs.

Since 2011 he has been a professor of piano at the Berlin University of the Arts, where he teaches an international class. He gives numerous masterclasses, including regularly in France, Austria, Japan, and South Korea, and serves on international competition juries such as the Concours de Genève and the Maj Lind International Piano Competition in Helsinki.