Margarita Höhenrieder is always treading unusual paths. Together with her friend, the painter Bernd Zimmer, she holds creative performances: “2 left hands,” in which Bernd Zimmer creates a picture with his left hand while Margarita Höhenrieder plays works exclusively for the left hand. The well-known jazz musician Ingfried Hoffmann, Hjálmar Hegi Ragnarsson from Iceland and Francoise Choveaux wrote compositions especially for this performance.

Françoise Choveaux builds on a musical tradition established in the 19th century. She is a composer and also a pianist. To date she has written more than 330 works for all instruments and all formations, from solo to symphony orchestra. Her works are performed in Europe (France, Italy, Germany, Russia, Belgium, Baltic states), in Asia and in America.

She is a prizewinner in the international Harald Genzmer competition for composers held in Munich.

It was during Margarita Höhenrieder’s studies with the legendary Leon Fleisher in Baltimore that she first met Françoise Choveaux – that early encounter was in New York. She was studying piano and composition and was already developing her own style, influenced by French Impressionism.

What fascinated Höhenrieder was her variety of tone colour, her atmospheric web of sound and the pianistic shaping of her early music.

Their friendship – and the rich artistic interaction that has resulted from it – goes right back to their student days together in the USA. In recent years Françoise Choveaux has dedicated several works to her. Françoise’s newest composition, the World Premiere tango recording Cristián en el Café Tortoni Buenos Aires, also dedicated to Margarita Höhenrieder, came about as a result of Höhenrieders and Françoise Choveaux shared enthusiasm for the music of South America – and especially for Buenos Aires.

Born in Monaco, the Bandoneon player Sébastien Innocenti discovered music within the family circle. He began studying the classical accordion and was admitted in 2012 to the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris in the class of Max Bonnay.