Performers Friday:
Piano maker Benjamin Schwarz, Löbau
Prof. Ulrike Wohlwender, Stuttgart
Pianist Silvia Molan, Stuttgart

Performers Saturday and Sunday:
Piano maker Benjamin Schwarz, Löbau
Pianist Sophia Weidemann, Stuttgart

Voluminous bass, ideal balance, singing treble: The piano manufacturer AUGUST FÖRSTER has fundamentally redesigned its concert grand piano – and is receiving much acclaim for the new Model 275 Sovereign. Piano maker Benjamin Schwarz will present the innovations incorporated into the piano and explain how the instrument's distinctive sound has been further developed. He will also demonstrate how easy it is to equip the piano with a different keyboard. For the first time, AUGUST FÖRSTER is offering all models with narrower keys as standard. This also applies to the concert grand piano. Switching from a standard keyboard to the narrow stretto 6.0 keys should be as easy as possible, making it readily applicable in everyday school life or before concerts. Professor Ulrike Wohlwender and pianists Silvia Molan from the Stuttgart University of Music and Performing Arts (HMDK Stuttgart) and Sophia Weidemann will then explain the value of the narrow keys for pianists. In recent years, students at these institutions and in Nuremberg have been systematically surveyed about their playing on narrower keys – with remarkable results. The researchers will discuss these findings. Finally, the artists will perform on the new Model 275 Sovereign concert grand piano: with narrow keys, but full tonal range.

Presentation contributors:
Benjamin Schwarz is a master piano maker at the AUGUST FÖRSTER piano factory in Löbau. As production manager, he is responsible for the technical processes in the factory and, together with master piano maker Annemarie Kampf, led the development of the new Model 275 Sovereign concert grand piano. Since 2021, he has been a member of the board of the German Association of Piano Makers (BDK).

Prof. Ulrike Wohlwender is Professor of Piano Pedagogy at the Stuttgart University of Music and Performing Arts. Her research on the causes of playing-related overuse syndromes in pianists is based on the hand research of music physiologist Christoph Wagner (Hanover). She is a founding member of the Zurich Center for Musicians' Hands (2009) and, together with Silvia Molan, founded the SIRIUS 6.0 future initiative in 2020.

Silvia Molan is a co-founder of the SIRIUS 6.0 future initiative at the Stuttgart University of Music and Performing Arts (2020). She established “Coaching SIRIUS 6.0” for individually tailored, healthy piano playing on 6.0 and standard keyboards, teaches a piano class at the Esslingen Music School, and was a lecturer in piano at the Regensburg University of Music from 2022 to 2024. Silvia Molan is a multiple prize winner of piano competitions and performs regularly as a soloist and chamber musician in Europe and America.

Sophia Weidemann is an award-winning national and international competition performer, both as a soloist and as a chamber musician. With her chamber music ensemble Kyklos Chambers, she won first prize at the Virtuoso e Belcanto Festival in Italy in the summer of 2022. As a soloist, she won first prizes at the International Alexander Scriabin Competition in Paris (2019) and the Béla Bartók Piano Competition in Vienna (2015).