Niklas Schmidt | Artistic Director
Niklas Schmidt will present the International Mendelssohn Festival (IMF) in Hamburg from September 10 to 21, 2025. With this, he brings together his concert series Fontenay Classics, the Schubertiade, and the Mendelssohn Summer School into one grand event.
Niklas Schmidt first studied in Hamburg and later in Cologne with the Amadeus Quartet. He was also a regular guest at the Menuhin Academy in Gstaad. As a founding member of the renowned Trio Fontenay, he performed as a cellist for two decades. With the trio, he recorded almost the entire repertoire for this genre on CD for Teldec, EMI, and Philips. Many of these recordings received high accolades, including the German Record Critics’ Award (Deutscher Schallplattenpreis) in 1994 and the Diapason d’Or for the complete recording of Beethoven’s piano trios. Among his recordings is also Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with the London Philharmonia Orchestra. His latest solo recordings include the sonatas by Schubert, Strauss, and Rachmaninoff, the preludes by Moscheles, and the complete solo suites by Johann Sebastian Bach. Niklas Schmidt is also the cellist of the Fine Arts Quartet (USA). He has served as a jury member at international competitions in Hamburg, Melbourne, Reggio Emilia (Borciani), Vienna, and Lyon. Most recently, he chaired the Mendelssohn Competition in Berlin. He is the Director of the International Mendelssohn Festival (IMF) in Hamburg and has been a professor of cello and chamber music in Hamburg since 1987. He also regularly gives masterclasses worldwide.
Niklas Schmidt plays a Rogeri cello (Brescia) from the year 1700.
Maia Siradze
Maia Siradze, born in 1997, is a Canadian-Georgian violinist. She grew up in Vancouver and began lessons at the age of 8. At a young age she won first prize three years in a row at the Kiwanis Music Festival. After high-school she went to Hamburg, Germany and began her studies under the tutelage of Prof. Sebastian Schmidt at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg. Parallel to that she also finished a Bachelor’s degree in Elementary Music Education. Since being in Germany, Maia Siradze has played with many orchestras (concertmaster/tutti)
such as the Lions Gate Sinfonia, Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, NDR Youth Orchestra, HSO HfMT & ML, Hamburger Camerata, Pan Caucasian Youth Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Symphoniker Hamburg, Philharmonische Staatsorchester Hamburg and in the Philharmonische Orchester der Hansestadt Lübeck.
Since 2018, Maia Siradze has developed a passion for the behind-the-scenes side of the music industry—project management. She has worked as a secretary in the President’s office of the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg, assistant at the Hamburger Camerata gGmBH and as of 2023 she is Project Manager of the International Mendelssohn Festival. Maia Siradze has held multiple scholarships, such as from the Maritim Hermann & Milena Ebel Foundation and the MHL Fördergesellschaft.
Maia Siradze is currently finishing her master’s with Prof. Maria Egelhof at the Musikhochschule Lübeck.