Leonard Melcher, violin

Leonard Melcher, born 1997 in Bad Soden am Taunus, received his first violin lessons at the age of five and his first piano lessons at the age of nine. From 2013 until 2016, he was a student of Ingo de Haas, first concertmaster of the Orchestra of the Frankfurt Opera. From 2013 until 2016, he was a member of the State Youth Orchestra of Hessen. Later he collected more orchestral experience as principal and concertmaster of the Kassel Youth Orchestra, the Junge Sinfonie Berlin, the Junge Norddeutsche Philharmonie and the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie. In the spring 2016, he began his violin studies at the Stuttgart Academy of Music and Performing Art with Kolja Lessing. He continued his studies from 2018 onward at the Frankfurt Academy of Music and Performing Art with Sophia Jaffé and Susanne Stoodt and graduated in 2021 with a Bachelor’s degree. From 2022 to 2024, he completed his master studies at the Lübeck Music Academy with Elisabeth Weber and Carlos Johnson. In the 2022/23 season, he was also a member of the academy of the Philharmonic Orchestra of Lübeck. Leonard Melcher gained further inspiration during master classes with Mark Gothoni, Ulf Hoelscher, Stefan Hempel, Rudens Turku, Maria Elisabeth Lott and Erika Geldsetzer as well as an Erasmus semester at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo, where he studied with Henning Kraggerud. As a soloist, he performed Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 with the Kassel Youth Orchestra and Antonio Vivaldi’s ›Autumn‹ at the Mühldorfer Sommerakademie. Contemporary music played a major role especially during his bachelor studies, when he performed Jörg Widmann’s ›Hunting Quartet‹ with fellow students. In 2023, he was part of Ensemble Modern Orchestra under the baton of George Benjamin.

The scholarship of Leonard Melcher is funded by the GVL, Crespo Foundation and others.