Biography
Canadian soprano Edith Wiens’ beautiful, versatile voice and assured musicality embraced an astonishingly vast repertoire from the baroque to the contemporary. She has collaborated with the world’s foremost conductors and orchestras, including the New York, Berlin, London, Munich and Israel Philharmonic Orchestras; Boston, Chicago, Toronto, Montreal and San Francisco Symphonies, the London Philharmonia, Dresden Staatskapelle and Cleveland Orchestras, the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields, Orchestre National de France and Orchestre de Paris; under such conductors as Daniel Barenboim, Sir Colin Davis, Charles Dutoit, Bernard Haitink, Sir Neville Marriner, Kurt Masur, Seiji Ozawa, Wolfgang Sawallisch, and Sir Georg Solti.
Ms Wiens has been warmly welcomed at the Salzburg, Lucerne, Tanglewood, Dresden, Berlin and Vienna Festivals, and the London Proms. Her operatic appearances included principal Mozart roles at Glyndebourne, La Scala, the Santa Fe Opera, Amsterdam Opera, Tokyo, and Buenos Aires’ Teatro Colon.
Especially renowned as a lieder singer of the highest order, Ms Wiens has given recitals in London (Wigmore Hall), Paris, Toronto, New York, Moscow, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Buenos Aires, Frankfurt, Florence, Munich and Berlin, and has been repeatedly invited to Vienna’s Musikverein.
A recipient of both the Grammy and Diapason d’Or Awards, Ms Wiens is well represented on the EMI, Erato and Philips Labels. Her discography includes works of Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Grieg, Mendelssohn, Mahler, Zemlinsky, Schumann and Wagner as well as four much praised CDs of Lieder by Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and Strauss, and Zemlinsky’s Lyrical Symphony with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande .
Edith Wiens is an Officer of the Order of Canada and has been a recipient of several honorary doctorate degrees. She is a jury member of various international competitions such as ARD Munich, Bertelsmann Neue Stimmen, Montreal and Geneva and regularly holds masterclasses in Europe and North America. As Professor of Voice at the Nürnberg Hochschule, Ms. Wiens is the artistic director of the Internationale Meistersinger Akademie. As of fall 2010, Edith Wiens has joined the faculty of the Juilliard School of Music in New York. Students of Edith Wiens are singing at major festivals, and at many opera houses across Europe, such as Vienna and Dresden. Ms Wiens lives in New York and in Munich with her cellist husband Kai Moser. Both their sons are acclaimed musicians: Johannes Moser (cello) and Benjamin Moser (piano).