“His beguilingly beautiful tone and technical sovereignty are unparalleled,” Holger Arnold praised in Fono Forum. “One of the best clarinetists in the country,” says ZDF Morgenmagazin. “He doesn’t just sing with the clarinet, he works magic with it,” MDR Kultur raves.
This is just a selection of the excellent press response to the album “Carl Maria von Weber: Complete Works for Clarinet”, which was released in February 2017 by the renowned label Berlin Classics (Edel). The recording was included in the German Record Critics’ Best List in the category “Concerts”: “This complete recording of the clarinet works by Carl Maria von Weber is convincing all along the line. Sebastian Manz […] explores his part with musical subtlety and distinguishes himself as a sovereign master of his instrument. Technical brilliance, cantabile and nuanced beauty of tone, playfulness and creative handling of the text come together here in a delightful way. […] A recording as if from one cast, round and fresh.” (for the jury: Norbert Hornig). In the category “Concert Recording of the Year (19th century music)”, “Weber: Complete Works for Clarinet” receives the ECHO Klassik: “For me, the crowning highlight of my Weber project – it makes me happy and proud and honors my album, into which I have put years of work and a lot of patience.”says clarinettist Sebastian Manz, for whom this is already the third ECHO Klassik.
As the grandson of the legendary Russian violinist Boris Goldstein, the son of two pianists born in Hanover in 1986 found his musical roots in his German-Russian family home. At the age of six, Sebastian Manz sang in the boys’ choir, first tried his hand at the piano, which he mastered very well, but soon concentrated on the clarinet, which had fascinated him ever since Benny Goodman’s recording of the E-flat Major Concerto by Carl Maria von Weber. No less than Sabine Meyer and Rainer Wehle were among his most important teachers and supporters.
His big breakthrough came with his sensational success at the ARD International Music Competition in Munich in September 2008, where he won not only the first prize in the clarinet category, which had not been awarded for 40 years, but also the coveted Audience Prize and other special prizes. A few months earlier he had also won the German Music Competition together with his piano partner Martin Klett. Sebastian Manz has been principal clarinetist of the SWR Symphony Orchestra since 2010.
Sebastian Manz began the 2018/2019 season with concerts by the wind ensemble variation5, with whom he was a guest in Cologne, Lindau, Nienburg, Viersen and Switzerland, among other places, before playing the clarinet concertos by Carl Maria von Weber and Aaron Copland as a soloist with the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra. In Australia, he gave concerts for the first time at the Huntington Estate Music Festival, and in spring 2019 he will give four concerts as part of “The Bowers Program” at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York. As a soloist, he has appeared with the Munich Symphony Orchestra, the Staatskapelle Halle, the Deutsches Kammerorchester Berlin and the Philharmonie Baden Baden, and has played in various formations at the Konzerthaus Dortmund, the Laeiszhalle Hamburg, the Berlin Philharmonie, the Philharmonie am Gasteig in Munich and the Kiel Palace.
His discography, which has won numerous awards, impressively demonstrates Sebastian Manz’s flair for special content and overall concepts. He also demonstrates his talent for arranging and composing in his albums and concerts time and again.
Since summer 2018, Sebastian Manz has been a member of “The Bowers Program” (formerly “CMS Two Program”) of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York for an initial period of three years. Likewise, he has been the artistic director of the :alpenarte festival in Schwarzenberg, Austria, since 2018.
In addition to his concert activities, Sebastian Manz is involved in the “Rhapsody in School” organization founded by Lars Vogt.