Katharina Sellheim
Katharina Sellheim is a German classical pianist, with a focus on chamber music and lied accompaniment. She has appeared in recitals internationally, is the pianist of the Münchner Philharmoniker, and lecturer of piano at the Musikhochschule Hannover.Career
Born in the daughter of the cellist Friedrich-Jürgen Sellheim, Katharina appeared in public first in 1994, with her father. A year later she won first prize in the national competition Jugend musiziert in two categories, piano solo and accompaniment. Sellheim studied at the Musikhochschule Hannover with Karl-Heinz Kämmerling and Markus Becker, and in Paris at the Ecole Normale de Musique Alfred Cortot with Germaine Mounier. She studied further with Paul Badura-Skoda, Eckart Sellheim, Norman Shetler and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. She received a scholarship of the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes and the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst. She achieved the first prize of the GEDOK competition in 2002.
Sellheim has accompanied prize-winners of competitions, such as the double bassist Nabil Shehata and the violinist Fumiaki Miura. She accompanied at master classes including their concerts of Fischer-Dieskau with lieder by Hugo Wolf on poems by Mörike and Goethe. She has played with her brother, the violist Konstantin Sellheim as the Duo Sellheim. They recorded a CD, Fantasy, of works by Robert Schumann, Paul Hindemith and Rebecca Clarke. Their combination of Hindemith's Fantasie-Sonate, Op. 11/4, Clark's Viola Sonata, and Schumann's Fantasiestücke, Op. 73, and his Märchenbilder, Op. 113, was received as illuminating relations in music history. With the clarinetist László Kuti, they have performed as the Sellheim-Kuti-Trio.
She has performed as part of the Hanover Piano Trio with violinist Lucja Madziar and cellist Katharina Troe, including concerts at the Beethovenfest in Bonn in 2016, where they played Beethoven's Piano Trio, Op. 1/3, Bells of Beyond by Graham Waterhouse, and Mendelssohn's Piano Trio No. 2.
Sellheim is the pianist of the Münchner Philharmoniker. She has been lecturer of piano at the Musikhochschule Hannover from 2007. She gave masterclasses in China and Estonia, among others. On an invitation by the Barenboim-Said Academy, she lectured in Ramallah and Jerusalem.
