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The Russian-born Israeli harpsichordist, organist, fortepianist and conductor, Zvi Meniker, was born in Moscow and raised in Israel. He began advanced musical studies at the age of 15. He received diplomas with distinction from the Salzburg Mozarteum and the Zürich Academy of Music, where he studied with Alois Forer, Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Johann Sonnleitner. He has passed his degree with honors, before moving on to the USA to study with Malcolm Bilson at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York (USA). At Cornell University he completed in 2001 his doctoral dissertation “Aspects of performance practice in Frédéric Chopin's piano works”.
Highly esteemed for his versatility, Zvi Meniker has at his disposal on his three instruments a repertoire that reaches from the works of the late Middle Ages into the 20th century, including many works by J.S. Bach. His virtuosic, lively, and passionate playing has frequently been praised in news reports and reviews from many cities in Europe, the USA, and Israel, and has been honored with prizes at international competitions.
Zvi Meniker taught harpsichord and performance practice at Duke University, USA, and is for many years a regular faculty member at the annual Early Music Workshop in Jerusalem. After teaching at the Mendelssohn Conservatory in Leipzig, Germany, he accepted in October 1999 a professorship at the Hannover Conservatory (Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hannover), where he currently teaches harpsichord, fortepiano and performance practice. He is also a visiting professor at the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music in Tel-Aviv. Meniker is one of those musicians that make the musicological studies of performance practice of playing fruitful questions on historical keyboard instruments.
Zvi Meniker has led several large-scale productions in Germany and France, among them a “double bill” of J. Blow’s Venus and Adonis and Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. His regular chamber ensembles are: Trio de l’Oustal (with recorder player Heiko ter Schegget and gambist Mieneke van der Velden) for works of the Baroque period; Trio Parole (with violinist Philippe Couvert and cellist Andrea Fossà) for the classical and early romantic repertoire; and he is also director of the Resonance Ensemble, a new Israeli group focusing on Baroque chamber music (with gambist and cellist Ira Givol, flautist Avner Geiger and violinist Jonathan Keren). He has also worked with the Leipziger Concert Ensemble. |
