Cellist Philipp Schupelius receives 2023 German Music Award

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The German Music Council has named 20-year-old cellist Philipp Schupelius as one of two winners of the 2023 German Music Awards. The prize includes performance opportunities across Germany, the chance to make a debut CD with Genuin Classics, and coaching on matters such as programming and music law.

Born in Berlin in 2003, Schupelius began playing the cello at the age of eight with Ulrich Voss. From 2018 to 2022 he studied with Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt at the Julius Stern Institute of the Berlin University of the Arts. In 2018 he received a scholarship from the Kronberg Academy, where he continues to study with Schmidt. This is the fifth year in a row that one of Schmidt’s students has received the award; others have included Sebastian Fritsch and Friedrich Thiele.

In January 2022 Schupelius made his debut at New York’s Carnegie Hall. Highlights of the coming season will include a performance of Tan Dun’s Intercourse of Fire and Water with the Thuringia Philharmonic, as well as appearances with the London Cello Society and at the Festival Radio France.

Schupelius’s prizes include the ‘Discovery Award’ at the 2020 International Classical Music Awards (ICMA) and, this summer, the silver medal at the Eurovision Young Musicians Contest in Montpellier, France. In October 2022 he received the Boris Pergamenshikov Grant and was awarded the 2023 Fanny Mendelssohn Prize. Since 2019 Schupelius has been playing a cello made in 1720 by Giuseppe Gagliano of Naples.

The only other winner of the prize this year is soprano Eva Zalenga, a prizewinner at the SWR Young Opera Stars 2023 competition. However, the Council awarded grants to a number of other cellists: Cosima Regina Federle, Anouchka Hack, Constantin Heise, Michael Wehrmeyer and Alexander Wollheim.

The German Music Awards have been awarded to classical soloists and chamber music ensembles by the German Music Council every year since 1975. Previous winners include violinist Ioana Cristina Goicea (2018), cellists Raphaela Gromes and Valentino Worlitzsch (2016) and violist Nils Mönkemeyer (2006).

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