Stefan Temmingh

Very often, Stefan Temmingh is called the “Successor of Frans Brüggen”, a “Faun with the recorder” or a “Revolutionary on his instrument”. One thing is clear: The South African recorder player and winner of the prestigious German OPUS Klassik Award 2022 in the category “Concerto Recording of the Year” (for his CD “Leipzig 1723”) belongs to the internationally leading soloists on his instrument.

His projects and recordings show that he is an artist who is not simply following well-known paths. Stefan Temmingh is setting new standards for his instrument, he is creating a new recorder tradition. Already with his first Corelli album he succeeded in crossing the boundaries of repertoire and sound: “Never before did recorder playing sound so effortless and so differentiated in terms of timbre and dynamics.” (Corriere della Sera). In 2014 and 2015, his CDs “Inspired by Song” and “BIRDS” with soprano Dorothee Mields were released by SONY/dhm, both highly acclaimed by the press. “BIRDS” was recommended by almost all national German radio stations and, for this recording, Stefan Temmingh received the ECHO Klassik Award 2016 as Instrumentalist of the Year (Flute). In 2017 Stefan Temmingh recorded the complete recorder concerti by Antonio Vivaldi with Capricornus Consort Basel for which he was awarded an International Classical Music Award 2018, the Editor’s Choice of Gramophone Magazine and the French Diapason d’or as “the new reference for this repertoire” (Diapason). His Handel duo CD with harpsichordist Wiebke Weidanz and his third CD with Dorothee Mields “Telemann” were published in 2019 and 2020. Autumn 2021 saw the release of his latest CD project, “Leipzig 1723”, again with Capricornus Consort Basel, for which he was awared the OPUS Klassik Award in 2022. The recording showcases recorder concertos by Bach, Fasch, Graupner and Telemann – the most famous German composers of their time who were all candidates for the Thomaskantor position in 1723.

As a specialist for Early Music Stefan Temmingh’s repertoire comprises the complete original literature for recorder. He performs internationally as a chamber musician and with his ensemble, e.g. at the Leipzig Bach Festival, the Mosel Music Festival, the Bach Weeks Thuringia, the Handel Festivals in Halle and in Göttingen, at the Alte Oper Frankfurt, the Grafenegg Festival, Oude Muziek Utrecht, the Boston Early Music Festival, the NCPA Beijing, the Shanghai Concert Hall and at various Early Music festivals and classical concert series worlwide. As a soloist, he plays with baroque, chamber and symphony orchestras such as the Deutsche Radiophilharmonie Saarbrücken-Kaiserslautern, the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, the Bochum Symphony Orchestra, the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, the Wurttemberg Chamber Orchestra Heilbronn, the WDR Funkhausorchester, the Hong Kong Sinfonietta, the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra South Africa and at the Ludwigsburg Festival. Since 2017 he has been collaborating closely with the Swiss baroque orchestra Capricornus Consort Basel.

Stefan’s commitment ranges from baroque to modern music. He regularly performs baroque concertos, but also commissions and performs premieres of contemporary recorder works. Since 2015, he has repeatedly been invited to conduct his orchestra engagements from the soloist desk.

Born in Cape Town, Stefan Temmingh comes from a Dutch-South-African family of musicians and now lives in Munich and Freiburg. Initially he studied with Markus Zahnhausen in Munich, then with Prof. Michael Schneider in Frankfurt. In 2008 he was awarded the contemporary music scholarship of the City of Munich. Since 2019 he has a professorship at the University of Music in Freiburg.