Biography
Kolja Hölscher was born in 2008 in Stuttgart. He began his piano studies at the age of five with Julia Goldstein at the Stuttgart Music School. In 2021, he continued his studies with Prof. Florian Hölscher, and since 2022 he has been a young student at the Young Academy of the University of Music and Performing Arts Frankfurt. He also receives his formal education at the Music Gymnasium/Eberhard-Ludwigs-Gymnasium in Stuttgart.
Kolja has won numerous national and international competitions, including the Bundeswettbewerb Jugend Musiziert 2023 (1st Prize Solo) and 2024 (1st Prizes in Violin and Piano Duo with Yungi Kaneko and Piano Duo with Yuanzhen Sun), the Concours international de piano Ile de France 2023 (2nd Prize), the Bechstein Competition Berlin 2022 (3rd Prize), the Kleine Schumann Competition Zwickau 2022 (3rd Prize), and the Grotrian Steinweg Competition Braunschweig 2017 (3rd Prize). In 2025, he won the 1st Prize at the XVII International Piano Competition “Giovani musicisti – Città di Treviso” and at the Bundeswettbewerb Jugend Musiziert in Wuppertal, he received two 1st Prizes in the categories Piano Chamber Music and Piano Accompaniment, as well as several special awards, including the Audience Prize and the Eckart-Rohlfs Special Prize. He has been awarded the Hildegard and Günther Prack Foundation Prize for New Music at the HfMDK Frankfurt multiple times. In addition, he received the Herrmann J. Abs Prize for the best interpretation of a work by Ludwig van Beethoven.
He has performed in renowned concert halls such as the Chamber Music Hall of the Beethoven House Bonn, the Great Hall of the Stadthalle Wuppertal, the Liederhalle Stuttgart, the White Hall of the New Palace Stuttgart, the Alte Oper Frankfurt, and the Grand Theatre of Theater Lübeck. In October 2024, he made his orchestral debut with the Philharmonic Orchestra of the City of Heidelberg at Schwetzinger Schloss (performing Carl Maria von Weber’s Piano Concerto No. 2). Since September 2023, Kolja has been a scholarship holder of the Jürgen Ponto Foundation.