Felix Hell

Prelude and Fugue E Minor (the “Wedge”) BWV 548           J. S. Bach

About Felix Hell

FELIX HELL was born on September 14, 1985, in Frankenthal/Pfalz, Germany. He took his first piano lesson at the age of seven, after having heard the C-Major Prelude, WTK-I, of J.S.Bach. He played it from memory after a few days listening to it and observing the piano player. Only eight months later, September 1993, he took his first organ lesson. Already in spring 1994, just 7 months after his first organ lesson, he participated in the Federal German competition for young musicians and received two First Prizes in organ playing.

On Easter 1994, still eight years old, he was on duty in his first service as a liturgical organist, playing the organ at a Roman Catholic High Mass. In 1996, 1997 and 1999, he took two First Prizes each year in piano and organ in the same competition. He pursued his organ studies at the Evangelical University of Church Music in Heidelberg. In 1999, he enrolled at the Juilliard School where he had been awarded a merit-based full tuition scholarship. Since September 2001 Felix has been studying, again under full tuition scholarship, at The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia under the tutelage of Dr. John Weaver and Alan Morrison.

In May 2004 Felix Hell graduated with the Bachelor of Music, entering the history of the Curtis Institute of Music as the youngest Organ Major ever to graduate from this world-famous conservatory. Since September 2004 Felix Hell is enrolled in both the Master of Music and the Artist Diploma programs at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA, studying under the guidance of Donald Sutherland, attending additional courses held by Joan Lippincott, Princeton, and Gillian Weir, London.

From the very beginning Felix Hell maintained a very busy recital schedule. His first solo appearance dates back to March 1994, and his first solo concert abroad the soon to be nine-year old Felix gave in August 1994 in the Great Hall of the Saratov Conservatory, Russia. Meanwhile Felix Hell has performed about 400 recitals in Germany and abroad: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Korea, Spain, France, Italy, Russia, Latvia, Iceland, Norway, Jamaica, and the USA, where he had given more than 250 concerts in 40 states.

Orchestra performances comprise concerts with the Charleston Symphony Orchestra, USA, the National Academy Orchestra of Canada under Boris Brott, and the NEC Philharmony, Boston, USA, under Jens Georg Bachmann.

Felix Hell is member of the American Guild of Organists, the German Gesellschaft der Orgelfreunde, and the Organ Music Society of Sydney. He holds the position as Organ Artist Associate at St. Peter's Lutheran Church in Manhattan, New York City, and was recently appointed Distinguished Organist-in-Residence at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

He has recorded six CDs, critically acclaimed by the public as well as by experts. His music has been broadcast several times, including a 90 minute solo show, by PIPEDREAMS as well as by radio stations of Germany, The Netherlands, Australia, and by the BBC in Great Britain.

Web site: http://www.felix-hell.com