Barbara Wittenberg

When I was little, I often spent the summer holidays in Bamberg. My uncle, Paul Hennevogl, was deputy solo viola. I was often allowed to attend the subscription concerts – occasionally without a ticket, even. He or my later violin teacher, Concertmaster Walter Forchert, would smuggle me through the artists' entrance of Bamberg’s old Dominikanerbau concert hall and across the stage. I sat up in the gods, on steps right in front of a sign saying ‘No sitting on the steps’. So many musical highlights: Haydn’s Sinfonia Concertante with my teacher plus the cello soloist Hans Häublein, a performance of the Hindemith Violin Concerto with Walter Forchert as soloist and – perhaps most impressive of all – Bruckner’s Seventh conducted by Eugen Jochum. For me, these childhood memories are something very special.

Barbara Wittenberg comes from Ingolstadt and studied under Prof. Walter Forchert in Frankfurt am Main, as well as Prof. Sergiu Luca in Houston, Texas (USA). Among her awards were a bursary for highly gifted students from the Free State of Bavaria and a scholarship Rice University, where she obtained her master’s degree in music in 1993.

Since 1993, Barbara Wittenberg has been a member of the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, and both a coach and artistic advisory board member of the Bavarian State Youth Orchestra.
For ten years she was on the Bamberg Symphony’s education team. She mentors as part of the Joseph Keilberth Orchestral Academy, and is a coach for the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie.