Christian Fellner MA, Dip.TCL, LTCL
I was born in London in 1963 and received my earliest musical training from my father, a professional organist, who taught me piano from the age of six. As well as piano, I learned harpsichord, organ and singing and performed baroque chamber music with my own ensemble. I began my formal vocal-training as a counter-tenor at the Royal Academy of Music, but decided I preferred singing in my natural bass-baritone voice and retrained at Trinity College of Music, London, graduating with diplomas in teaching and performing. I then continued my vocal studies with Esther Salaman in London and Professor Evgenia Sheveliova in Moscow. An interest in the spoken voice took me to the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London, where I graduated with a first-class MA in Voice Studies.
My teaching career began in my late teens when I was asked to teach piano and music theory to a group of children in my neighbourhood and prepare them for the ABRSM grade exams. I discovered that teaching was something I enjoyed and in a few years I was teaching around thirty piano lessons a week. I began teaching singing during my final year at Trinity and this led naturally to teaching spoken voice as well.
After graduating from Central in 2010, I taught voice and text to actors at the Poor School, a London drama school in Kings Cross. This continued until the School closed in 2017 and I now run a private practice from my home in Teddington, South West London and teach voice at The School – a new school of acting in Islington, North London – https://theschoollondon.co.uk
Alongside teaching, I also have a career as a singer and have performed widely in the UK and across Europe. Early opera roles included Papageno in Mozart’s Magic Flute, Ariodates in Handel’s Xerxes and Apollo in Monteverdi’s Orfeo, but my main performing activity has been as a recitalist and chamber musician singing repertoire ranging from baroque chamber cantatas by Clérambault, Frescobaldi, Scarlatti, Purcell and JS Bach to songs by twentieth century composers Shostakovich, Georgii Sviridov, Samuel Barber and Ned Rorem. At the centre of my repertoire are the songs and cycles of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and Hugo Wolf.
I gave recitals in Russia with the Sviatoslav Richter International Foundation in Moscow and Tarusa, and sang Schubert’s Schwanengesang cycle at the Scriabin Museum in Moscow. I have given several song recitals at Oxford University including a Russian Song programme at the Holywell Music Room.
Fellner Voice 