Stauffer Academy Cremona Appoints New Cello Professor

Frans Helmerson will lead the Academy’s Advanced Cello Course from the beginning of the 2024/25 academic year

The Swedish cellist, pedagogue, and conductor Frans Helmerson has been appointed a Professor of the Advanced Cello Course at Cremona’s Stauffer Academy. He succeeds the Brazilian cellist Antonio Meneses, who has led the program since 2015.

Stauffer’s cello course offers individual lessons with Helmerson, as well as meetings with other renowned cellists and extensive opportunities for public performance. In the 2024/25 academic year, students will undertake masterclasses with Nicolas Altstaedt, Enrico Dindo, and Giovanni Sollima.

Helmerson trained with Guido Vecchi, Giuseppe Selmi, and William Pleeth. The winner of the 1971 Cassado Competition, he is a prominent soloist and has appeared in locations across Europe, Japan, Russia, South America, Australia, New Zealand, and the USA.

Among his collaborators are conductors such as Seiji Ozawa, Evgeni Svetlanov, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Frübeck de Burgos, Kurt Sanderling, and Mstislav Rostropovich.

Helmerson has served as Principal Professor of Cello at the Kronberg Academy since 2006, Professor at Berlin’s Barenboim-Said Akademie since 2016, and Guest Professor at The Juilliard School since 2012.

He has also taught at conservatories in Cologne and Madrid and at the Hochschule für Musik “Hanns Eisler” in Berlin.

“I am very excited to have the opportunity to work with young and promising Italian cellists,” Helmerson said. “I am grateful to the Stauffer Foundation for the trust they placed in me.”

“With the arrival of Frans Helmerson, the Stauffer Academy confirms its purpose to give its students the opportunity to learn from remarkable and charismatic professors and musicians,” said Alessandro Tantardini, President of the Stauffer Foundation.

“Alongside the founding Maestros, Salvatore Accardo and Bruno Giuranna, he will share his wide-ranging experience with the new generations. It is an honor and a pleasure for the Stauffer Foundation to welcome a musician of such stature.”