ABOUT
Swiss-Austrian Flutist Aniela Frey holds the position of Principal Flute at the Royal Opera House «Teatro Real» in Madrid and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid. She was appointed Assistant Professor of Jacques Zoon at the prestigious Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía in Madrid and since 2015 holds a professorship at the Music Conservatory “Centro Superior de Enseñanza Musical Katarina Gurska” in Madrid. Aniela Frey performs frequently as a soloist and in the chamber music concert series of the Royal Opera House Madrid. She regularly conducts master classes for flute and has been invited repeatedly as a guest principal flutist at various international orchestras.
Aniela Frey received her musical training at the Music University of Freiburg as a precollege student, where she subsequently completed her concert diploma with Robert Aitken. Gaining an Erasmus scholarship, she went to Vienna to study at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst and later on received her soloist diploma with distinction with Jacques Zoon at the Conservatoire de Musique in Geneva. In addition to her studies, she received significant musical encouragement by renowned artists such as Aurèle Nicolet, Emmanuel Pahud (Accademia Musicale de Chigiana de Siena), Jeanne Baxtresser, Philippe Bernold, Hansgeorg Schmeiser, Wolfgang Schulz etc.
Aniela Frey’s musical talent became evident at a young age, as she won first prizes with the recorder and later with the flute at national («Jugend Musiziert») and international music competitions (Festa Special Award at the Osaka International Chamber Competition), both as a soloist and as a chamber musician. She won the highly acclaimed international «Prix Credit Suisse de Jeunes Solistes» and as a result was invited to make her debut with a solo recital at the Lucerne Festival. In the same year, she performed at the Davos Festival «Young Artists in Concert», as well as at the Mont Blanc Festival, where she won the «Grand Prix Zulawski».
Over the years, Aniela Frey gathered extensive orchestral experience playing as the principal flute in numerous outstanding youth orchestras such as the German National Youth Orchestra (Bundesjugendorchester), the Junge Baden-Württembergische Philharmonie and the Junges Klangforum Mitte Europa. She was Principal Flutist of the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra and invited to play in the Chamber Orchestra of Munich. Furthermore, Aniela Frey was accepted into the Orchestra Academy of the Zurich Opera House, where she was able to significantly broaden her experience and repertoire by playing in a leading international opera orchestra. Subsequently, she was invited there again to play concerts as a Guest Principal Flutist.
Aniela Frey became a member of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra under the conductorship of Claudio Abbado and has played under the baton of such famed conductors as Semyon Bychkov, Valery Gergiev, Christoph von Dohnányi, Franz Welser-Möst, Thomas Hengelbrock, Marc Minkowski, Adam Fischer, Ivor Bolton, Jesús López Cobos, etc.
She has frequently been invited to international concert tours and festivals (e.g. Salzburg Festival, Lucerne Festival, Edinburgh Festival, Bolzano Summer Festival, etc.), where she participated in CD and DVD recordings with wellknown labels such as Decca, EMI, and Deutsche Grammophon.
In the course of her career, Aniela Frey took a sabbatical year in which she pursued studies of Music and Event Management in London, specializing on humanitarian development. After having concluded her studies «summa cum laude», she went on spending six months in Argentina and Africa working with NGOs on-site. Subsequently, she initiated a charitable cooperation between her orchestra, the Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid, and the foundation “Edytra/Polígono Don Bosco” in San Salvador, Central America. Since then, Aniela Frey has built a strong connection to Africa and Central America and repeatedly returns to Tanzania and El Salvador for continuous work on her music projects.
Pursuing her extensive interests, in 2023 Aniela Frey together with her colleague Gabor Szabo, founded the music agency Madrid Soloists Artist Management. As Co-CEO, she promotes dynamic musicians and the agency owned Madrid Soloists Chamber Orchestra.
