Knut Schoch (Tenor) studied with Wilfried Jochens and Alan Speer in Hamburg. Masterclasses with Jill Feldman, Margreet Honig, Ian Partridge, James Wagner and Hartmut Höll. His wide repertoire spreads from works of the middle ages to contemporary music.

Important emphasis of his work is the authentic interpretation of music composed before 1800. He is well known for his interpretations of Cantatas und Oratories by Bach (Evangelist), Händel and their contemporaries. Focusing on close and precise text work, he is predestined for the song repertoire. In various duos he permanently presents different programs with works from Krieger, Beethoven or Schumann to Britten. With Carsten Linck (Guitar) he recorded music of the beginning 19th century, including Schubert's "Schöne Müllerin". With Eckart Begemann and Ludger Rémy on fortepiano he presented the famous Schubert cycles.

Concerts have lead him to various international festivals like the Händel-festivals in Göttingen und Halle, Rheingau-Musik-Festival, Schleswig-Holstein-Festival, Opernfestspiele München, Settimane Bach in Milano, Flandernfestival in Utrecht. Concerts in Paris, Lyon, Kopenhagen, Stockholm, Tokyo, at the Folles Journées or the Wiener Festwochen have made him a sought after soloist in Europe, America and Asia.
Various Radio- and TV-recordings prove the tremendous bandwidth of his repertoire, which is to be heard on about 100 CDs (e.g. at Acanthus, Amphion, Brillant Records, cpo,capriccio, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, Naxos, Sony). Among the famous conductors he has worked with are Ivor Bolton, Thomas Hengelbrock, Jos van Immerseel, Konrad Junghänel, Ton Koopman, Sigiswald Kuijken, Gustav Leonhardt, Peter Neumann and Joshua Rifkin.

Since 1993 Knut Schoch teaches at the Music Conservatory of Hamburg. Between 1999 and 2002 he was Professor at the Hamburger Musikhochschule. Since 2008 he is teaching at the Musikhochschule Bremen and in masterclasses in Germany and abroad (e.g. in Tokyo, Osaka und Kyoto).

Carsten Linck (Guitar) studied with Prof. Hans Gräf, Prof. Maritta Kersting and Prof. Iwona Salling in Essen and Düsseldorf. Additional studies lead him to Prof. Karl Scheit (Viena) und Prof. Per-Olof Johnson (Malmö).

He plays a wide spread program from early renaissance music to contemporary compositions, presenting all works on instruments authentic for the respective historical period. Besides a modern 6-stringed guitar for works composed since 1900, he plays music from the renaissance and baroque period on an 11-string-guitar by Georg Bolin. This special and rare instrument with his augmented scale offers fascinating possibilities for authentic interpretations of literature originally written for lute, harpsichord or piano. When playing works composed around 1800, Carsten Linck uses copies of various instruments of that time.

Carsten Linck has been award the 1st Prize at the "International Music Competition Bubenreuth". In 1992 he received the cultural prize of the city of Essen. Besides various productions for radio (e.g. WDR, Deutschland Radio) and TV (WDR, ZDF, RIAS Berlin) he recorded CDs for Orfeo International, SIGNUM, ARS Produktion and Amphion Records. Among the musician he recorded with are the Folkwang Guitar Duo, Marjana Lipovsek, Sibylla Rubens, Ingeborg Danz, Scot Weir, Knut Schoch, Thomas Cooley, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, duo tassai, Carsten Neumann, duo ascolto and the flutist Susanne Wohlmacher. His arrangements for various instruments are edited at Musikverlag Trekel, Hamburg.

http://www.knut-schoch.de
http://www.carstenlinck.de