Young Composers’ Forum

Filippo Lepre was born in Milan in 1995. He began his musical career as a trumpet player and took up composition at the age of 15. After exploring traditional compositional techniques, he turned his attention to contemporary music.

At the heart of his work is the concept of the “polyphony of action,” in which a single instrument simultaneously performs several independent playing actions, becoming a vehicle for complex, multilayered sound. He is also interested in a mimetic approach to instrumentation, exploring sonic similarities and complementary relationships between instruments. His works combine instrumentally complex textures with harmonic clarity and a clearly defined linear structure.

Lepre earned a degree in classical trumpet performance and a bachelor’s degree in composition from the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan. He subsequently completed an advanced composition program at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome. He is now pursuing a doctorate in composition. His music has been featured at international competitions, festivals, and concert series across Europe, the United States, Asia, and Russia. Over the past six years, he has composed nearly 50 works, ranging from solo pieces to orchestral compositions.

The Greek-German pianist and harpsichordist Andreas Skouras was born in 1972 in Thessaloniki, Greece, and studied piano with Prof. Franz Massinger and harpsichord with Prof. Lars Ulrik Mortensen and Prof. Ketil Haugsand at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich. Concert appearances, CD, radio, and television recordings as a pianist and harpsichordist—both with orchestra and as a soloist—as well as chamber music and art song recitals regularly take him to festivals across Europe, such as Early Music in London, Sacrum Profanum in Kraków, the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, the Summer Concerts between the Danube and the Altmühl, the MDR Musiksommer, the Bluval Festival, les museiques in Basel, and Gidon Kremer’s Lockenhaus, as well as to the United States, where he has performed at venues including Carnegie Recital Hall in New York. His chamber music partners include Peter Sadlo, Wen-Sinn Yang, Lars Ulrik Mortensen, Gábor Boldoczki, Nicolas Hodges, and Minas Borboudakis. Skouras is particularly dedicated to performing previously unpublished or rarely heard works. Andreas Skouras caused a sensation among concert audiences and music experts alike when he rescued Richard Strauss’s Suite from Capriccio for solo harpsichord from obscurity and when he performed Elgar’s own transcription of the Enigma Variations. His deep engagement with contemporary music is reflected in his collaborations with many renowned contemporary composers, most of whom have written pieces for him—including B. Hummel, Zechlin, Corcoran, Schwenk, Kiesewetter, Terzakis, Acker, Kochan, Stadlmair, Baur, Glanert, Shchedrin, Borboudakis, Weiß, Stahnke, Aho, Tiensuu, and Eliasson. Andreas Skouras teaches harpsichord at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Munich and regularly gives master classes in piano at the State Conservatory in Tbilisi. Among other honors, he has been awarded the City of Munich Music Scholarship and the Bavarian Art Promotion Prize.

KP Werani is active in the world of contemporary and classical music in a variety of ways. After studying violin, viola, musicology, philosophy, and sociology, and pursuing an international career as a violist and violinist with the BRSO, at MusikFabrik NRW, in TrioCoriolis, in Duo2KW, and as a soloist at leading festivals for new music, KP Werani now devotes himself intensively to composing. As a highlight of the 2025–26 season, the modular work Schicht um Schicht (Layer by Layer), in versions for solo cello and for string trio, was premiered on September 27, 2025, by Hanno Simons and TrioCoriolis in a concert presented by musica viva München. His latest work, am Sommer erstickt, will be performed several times in 2026/27 by soloist Geneviève Strosser in Germany, France, Switzerland, and Luxembourg, alongside a new work by Georges Aperghis.

Kai Wangler, born in Freiburg, studied accordion in Trossingen with Hugo Noth. He is the first-prize winner of the Iris Marquardt Prize and the music competition organized by the Kulturkreis der deutschen Wirtschaft. Kai Wangler is a sought-after performer of new, avant-garde accordion music and has premiered a wide range of new works—from solo pieces to music theater—by composers of various generations. Engagements have taken him to ensembles such as the Ensemble Modern, the Klangforum Wien, and the Neue Vokalsolisten Stuttgart. He has appeared as a guest at events including the Heidelberger Frühling, the Steirischer Herbst in Graz, the Munich Biennale for New Music Theater, the Wien Modern Festival, and the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. In 2013, he founded DUO2KW with violist Klaus-Peter Werani, and since 2017 has been curating the “DUO2KW-expanding!” concert series in Munich, which juxtaposes the repertoire for this instrumentation with specially commissioned compositions. In 2022, Wangler received a grant from the City of Munich to produce two concert evenings featuring live electronics.