Asja Valcic
She studied with V. Despalj (Zagreb/Croatia), L. Terraspulsky (Massachusetts/USA), N. Schahovskaja (Moscow/Russia) and K. Georgian (Detmold, Germany). Graduation with Soloist's Diploma. She attended master classes with B. Pergamenchikov and B. Greenhouse. She has played chamber music with G. Schulz (Alban Berg Quartett), H. Schoneweg (Cherubini Quartett), I. Bolton (Brodsky Quartett), I. Bieler (Melos Quartett), A. Engegard (Orlando Quartett), T. Brandis (Brandis Quartett), and many others. As a soloist she performed with the Zagreb Philharmonic, Belgrade Philharmonic and the Westfälische Kammerorchester, conducted by the likes of Kazushi Ono and Zubin Mehta. In 1995 she won the “Concours international de jeunes concertistes de Douai" in France. She recorded Sonatas of Shostakovich and Schnittke for Jugoton (1989) and Serenads of Martinu for d+g (German Record Critics' Award in 1998). Valcic was teaching at the music academy of Zagreb (Croatia), at the Dartington International School of Music/England, in Chioggia/Italy and at the university of music Detmold/Germany.Since 2008 she is playing in duo with Klaus Paier. She is a cellist of radio.string.quartet.vienna since 2004.

Klaus Paier
studied accordion, jazz and composition at Klagenfurt conservatory. Paier has been particularly inspired by such instrumentalists as Keith Jarrett, Bill Evans, Charles Mingus or Thelonious Monk. For him, their conception of jazz, with its wide diversity of musical possibilities and freedoms, was of inestimable importance. In addition to the historically evolved European harmonies involving the accordion, the classical component has also assumed an unmistakable position in Paier's compositions. He himself aims to express a positively charged polarity in music: attraction and rejection, weight and lightness, loudness and quietness, openness and selfcontainment, strict discipline and passionate explosiveness. He accomplishes this feat again and again in an inimitable manner, enthralling his audience in concert tours in Israel, France, Italy, Sweden, Poland and many other European countries. Be it as a soloist, with his duo partner Gerald Preinfalk, in the trio with Stefan Gfrerrer and Roman Werni, or the radio.string.quartet.vienna – Klaus Paier ranks among the great European accordionists with a world-wide reputation.