Making music came as naturally to Andrè Schuen as speech. The baritone, raised in a family of multilingual musicians, communicates as fluently with melody as he does in German, Italian and Ladin, the regional tongue of the part of the South Tyrol in which he was born. His repertoire embraces everything from Lieder and opera to traditional Ladin folk music and spans the spectrum of human emotions. Above all, it reflects the singer’s passion for words and his determination to convey their meaning in performance.
Critics have been inspired by Schuen’s combination of vocal authority, tonal warmth and expressive intelligence. “This dark, unstrained baritone is one of the most beautiful things you can hear at the moment; it is an unreservedly wonderful voice,” observed the Frankfurter Rundschau, while Gramophone has praised his enormous expressive range and ability to spin “long, quiet lines that flow with consummate ease”.
Andrè Schuen’s artistry, matured over time, has led to invitations to perform on the world’s leading stages and to an exclusive agreement with Deutsche Grammophon. For his DG debut album, released in March 2021, he recorded Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin with pianist Daniel Heide. Reviewing the album, The Sunday Times praised Schuen’s “emotional truthfulness”.
Schuen followed this success with a recording of Schubert’s final collection of songs, Schwanengesang, again with his regular duo partner Heide. Schwanengesang was released to great acclaim in November 2022, with Gramophone hailing the singer’s “fresh, beautifully contoured baritone, deployed with breath control that allows him to sail into long vocal lines with an illuminating sense of long-term musical direction, plus telling articulation of text”. The album was honoured with a 2023 Opus Klassik award in the Solo Song category.
The singer’s latest recording sees him complete the trilogy of Schubert’s major song cycles. Schuen performs the 24 songs that make up the composer’s Winterreise with a restraint that serves to heighten the cycle’s pervading sense of melancholy, supported throughout by the equally brilliant pianism of Daniel Heide Released by DG on 17 May 2024, the recording also forms the soundtrack for the live-action/animation feature film A Winter’s Journey, directed by Alex Helfrecht and starring John Malkovich, Marcin Czarnik and Jason Isaacs, among others.
Highlights of Schuen’s 2023–24 season so far include the title role in Schwanda, der Dudelsack-Pfeifer at the Theater an der Wien (November 2023); a performance of Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen as part of the DG125 birthday concert conducted by Joanna Mallwitz at the Berlin Konzerthaus (December 2023, available on STAGE+); a reprise of the King’s herald in Lohengrin at the Bayerische Staatsoper (February 2024); Brahms/Mahler recitals with Daniel Heide in Vevey, London, Bilbao and Madrid (March); and his successful debut at Carnegie Hall, performing the Brahms Requiem with Orchestra of St. Luke’s, conducted by Xian Zhang (May).
Future engagements include recitals with pianist Julius Drake at Berlin’s Pierre Boulez Saal (19 May) and the Aldeburgh Festival (9 June); returns to the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, as Guglielmo in Così fan tutte (26, 29 June/2, 4, 6, 10 July), and to the Bayerische Staatsoper, as Wolfram von Eschenbach in Tannhäuser (21, 25, 28 July); and further Brahms/Mahler recitals with Daniel Heide in Copenhagen (21 August), at the Vilabertran Schubertíada (23 August) and at the Schwarzenberg-Hohenems Schubertiade (29 August). He opens next season playing Count Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro at the Wiener Staatsoper.
Born in 1984 in La Val, South Tyrol, Andrè Schuen studied cello as a child, as well as playing and singing Ladin folk music as part of a family ensemble that also included his mother, father, two sisters and a cousin. He later switched his focus to singing and won a place at the Salzburg Mozarteum where he studied with the Romanian soprano Horiana Brănişteanu and received lessons in Lieder and oratorio from fellow baritone Wolfgang Holzmair. His formative training also included masterclass sessions with, among others, Kurt Widmer, Sir Thomas Allen, Brigitte Fassbaender, Marjana Lipovšek and Olaf Bär.
In 2009 Schuen appeared as singer and actor at the Salzburg Festival in Luigi Nono’s Al gran sole carico d’amore and, the following year, joined the festival’s Young Singers Project. After graduating with distinction in 2010, he spent four years as a member of Graz Opera, and made his debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Sir Simon Rattle in 2011. He earned critical acclaim as one of the few performers to appear throughout Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s 2014 cycle of Mozart’s Da Ponte operas at the Theater an der Wien, for which he sang the roles of Figaro, Don Giovanni and Guglielmo. He made his US debut in 2017, giving recitals with Thomas Adès at the Tanglewood Festival and with Andreas Haefliger at the Aspen Music Festival. His partnership with Daniel Heide has flourished in concert as well as on disc, including regular appearances at the Schubertiade in Hohenems and Schwarzenberg.
5/2024