Kurt Azesberger received his first musical education as alto-soloist at the boys’ choir school of St Florian’s Monastery in Austria, and continued his studies at the Bruckner Conservatory in Linz and at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna with Hilde Rössel-Majdan, Kurt Equiluz and Peter Schreier. In 1991 he received the Mozart Interpretation Award for young Austrian artists from the Austrian Ministry of Education and Art.
The artist became famous for his interpretation of the part of the Evangelist in Bach’s Passions, which he performed at the Salzburg Festival, the Easter Festival Vienna, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, in The Hague, at the Royal Festival Hall in London, in Prague, Vienna’s Konzerthaus and Musikverein, Tel Aviv, Berlin, Milan, Lucerne, Paris and in other major venues under conductors including Frühbeck de Burgos, Welser-Möst, Chailly, Gielen, and Harnoncourt.
Azesberger sang Klaus Narr in Gurrelieder by Schönberg under Claudio Abbado and Vladimir Fedoseyev, Mönch in Jakobsleiter by Schönberg under Michael Gielen and Kent Nagano, an the tenor part in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony under Myung Whun Chung and Semyon Bychkov.
The abundance of radio and CD recordings is a testimony to Kurt Azesberger’s broad range of repertoire: Das Buch Mit Sieben Siegeln by Schmidt under Horst Sein, Cantatae Profanae by Bach (for Harmonia Mundi) and Krösus by Keiser’s (both under René Jacobs), Lazarus by Schubert under Helmuth Rilling for Hänssler Classic, Jakobsleiter by Schönberg under Eliahu Inbal for Denon, L’Apocalypse selon St. Jean by Françaix for Wergo Mainz, Missae Breves by Mozart under Nikolaus Harnoncourt for Teldec, and Coronation Mass under Leopold Hager for Denon.
The artist presents also 20th-century concert music (Winterreise by Zender, Serenade for tenor, horn and strings and The Prodigal Son by Britten, and Prophet/Der Weg Der Verheißung by Weill) and recitals.
For Azesberger, the current season opened with W.A. Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte at the Edinburgh Festival, under Claudio Abbado, and the artist’s further plans include singing Aegisth in Strauss’s Elektra at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice.