Kundri Lu Emma Schäfer – Violin and Viola
Making music, passing it on and drawing are Kundri’s passions. She is a trained violinist and violist.
She started playing the violin at the age of four and lived in Germany, the US, Ireland, Spain and France during her childhood and youth. At the age of 11 to 18 she self-taught herself violin playing.
This was followed by studies at the Conservatoire de Montpellier and the Berlin University of the Arts under Prof. Axel Gerhardt (Second Violin Solo Berlin Philharmonic). She finished her violin studies with a top grade of 1.0 in her main subject violin. An Erasmus scholarship brought her to Bern, where she studied with Prof. Barbara Doll and Elisabeth Bundies. In 2012 she graduated with distinction from the Master Performance Violin with Prof. Corina Belcea (Belcea Quartet).
In Berne Kundri discovered her love for the viola. Kundri studied for three years with Prof. Patrick Jüdt at the HKB Viola and graduated in 2013 with honors. In January 2017, Kundri completed her artistic masters of viola with Prof. Veronika Hagen (Hagen Quartet) at the Mozarteum Salzburg.
Kundri has been a member of the ORBIS Quartet since 2014. She is currently completing a chamber music study string quartet with Prof. Rainer Schmidt from the Hagen Quartet in Salzburg. In addition, the quartet has lessons at the Artemisquartett in Berlin. In September 2014 she won the second prize at the International Brahms Competition Pörtschach and in September 2015 the first prize and the special prize of the city of Krakow at the International Beethoven Competition Poland. Since October 2016, she continues her chamber music studies at the Academy of Music Hanns Eisler Berlin with Prof. Feltz and Prof. Andreas Reiner (Rosamunde Quartet). Since May 2015 she is an aspirant of ECMA, European Chamber Music Academy, Vienna.
Concert tours have taken her to Australia, Canada and many large auditoriums across Europe. She guested in the Opéra de Paris, the Philharmonie in Berlin, the Fundacion Gulbenkian in Lisbon and the Auditorio Nacional de Madrid. In 2009 and 2010 she represented the Berlin University of the Arts with her string quartet at the “Kyoto International Festival” in Japan. Radio recordings were created u.a. for the NDR and the RBB.
In 2011 and 2012 she received a scholarship from the Gustav Mahler Academy Bolzano. Since 2013 she is a scholarship holder of Villa Musica Rheinland-Pfalz. Among her chamber music partners were u.a. Jürgen Kussmaul, Gilles Apap, Peter Hörr, Friedemann Eichhorn, Barbara Doll, Conradin Brotbek and Vera Beths. Kundri has gained orchestral experience as a concertmaster of the Young European Youth Orchestra, as a violist in the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester and in the 2012/13 season as an academician for the viola section of the Bern Symphony Orchestra.
Master classes u.a. Hatto Beyerle, Johannes Meissl, Hartmut Rohde, Antonello Farulli, Benjamin Schmid, Patricia Kopacinskaja, Ernst Kovacic, Heime Müller, Stephan Picard and Jean Sulem completed her training. Kundri loves to teach. She can look back on ten years of teaching experience with students from 4 to 70 from beginners to music college students.