Markus Fleck - violin/viola

grew up in a family of musicians in the Mozart city of Augsburg, where he began playing the violin at the age of 7. He has been playing the viola intensively for over 20 years.

The humanistic musical Gymnasium at St. Stephan in Augsburg provided further musical impulses, as did a year at high school in the USA.

He studied violin at the Augsburg Conservatory with Lydia Dubrovskaya & with Rudolf Koelman in Winterthur/Zurich.

As a student, he founded and headed the Bayerische Kammerphilharmonie for several years. In 1995 the casalQuartet was formed, which studied with the Carmina Quartett in Winterthur as well as the Alban Berg Quartett in Cologne and Walter Levin/Hatto Beyerle in Basel.

Rapid success at competitions, numerous concerts and recordings marked the quartet's rise as one of the most internationally recognized and successful ensembles.

Prominent partners such as Martha Argerich, Fazil Say, Gautier Capuçon, Khatia Buniatishvili, Christoph Pregardien, Clemens Hagen, Regula Mühlemann and many others have performed and recorded with the cQ.

CD productions have won the ECHO KLASSIK, the German Record Critics' Award, the Diapason d'Or and have been nominated for the GRAMMY.

Markus Fleck was a co-founder of the CHAARTS ChamberAartists in Switzerland and regularly performs with them on stage. He also curated the Arosa Music Festival for many years and is currently the director of the Arosa Music Academy (since 2010), which supports music students through master classes and concerts.

Here he is responsible for chamber music and the several concerts at the Arosa Music Festival.

He has already given master classes at the renowned Villa Musica Foundation in Mainz and at the Stuttgart University of Music.

He has also been tutoring children and young people for many years.

In addition, Markus Fleck writes for the Schweizer Musikzeitung, publishes first editions with AMADEUS-Verlag and is a regular guest on the “Diskothek” program on SRF radio.

He has been a guest in many orchestras, including as concertmaster and section leader, for example in the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, the European Baroque Youth Orchestra, the Bayerische Kammerphilharmonie, the Barockorchester Stuttgart, the Argovia Philharmonic and many more.

His main focus, however, is on chamber music, which he performs in the casalQuartett with around 2000 concerts to date and in mixed ensembles at festivals with Maurice Steger, José Gallardo, Benedikt Klöckner, Abigail Kralik, Mathis Rochat, David Castro-Balbi, Won-Ho Kim, Jiska Lambrecht, Clémence de Forceville, Kirill Trousov, Damien & Darryl Bachmann, among others.

The vast repertoire aquired during his career ranges from early Baroque music to Contemporary works and music of many genres.