Christoph Eschenbach

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Christoph Eschenbach (undated)

Christoph Eschenbach (born February 20, 1940 in Breslau ) is a German pianist and conductor .

Life

Childhood and youth

Christoph Eschenbach's mother died when he was born. His father, the Breslau musicologist Heribert Ringmann , died in World War II as a member of a parole battalion to which he had been transferred as an opponent of National Socialism . At first, the grandmother looked after the boy, but she too died in the winter of 1945/46 while fleeing from Silesia. Eventually he was taken in in 1946 by his mother's cousin, Wallydore Eschenbach, and her husband. He grew up with them, whose name he took, first in Wismar and later in Neustadt in Holstein . His foster mother, herself a pianist , discovered Christoph's interest in music and taught him to play the piano from 1948 to 1959 . As a ten-year-old, Christoph Eschenbach won first prize at the Hamburg Steinway competition. Even as a child he played the organ in the Altenkrempe basilica in the village of the same name near Neustadt. In 1959 he passed his Abitur at the Einhard Gymnasium in Aachen .

Career as a pianist

After graduating from high school, Eschenbach studied with Hans-Otto Schmidt-Neuhaus at the Cologne University of Music . After returning to Hamburg, he studied piano with Eliza Hansen and conducting with Wilhelm Brückner-Rüggeberg at the Hamburg University of Music and Theater . After winning the ARD competition in 1962 and winning the International Clara Haskil Piano Competition in Lucerne in 1965, he began his international career as a pianist in 1966 with performances in London and in 1969 in the USA. A sustained, sustainable artistic collaboration linked him with both Herbert von Karajan and George Szell .

Eschenbach also devoted himself intensively to song accompaniment and chamber music , especially with the Houston Symphony Chamber Players he founded . With his former fellow Hamburg student Justus Frantz and with Tzimon Barto he played piano music for four hands or two grand pianos. His recordings of concerts for several pianos by Mozart and Johann Sebastian Bach with Justus Frantz and Helmut Schmidt as piano partners gained popularity . In 2012 Eschenbach was Residence Artist at the Philharmonie Essen .

Career as a conductor

In 1972 Eschenbach made his conductor's debut with a performance of Anton Bruckner's 3rd Symphony in Hamburg. Conducting soon became the focus of his work. From 1979 to 1981 Eschenbach was general music director of the State Philharmonic of Rhineland-Palatinate in Ludwigshafen am Rhein and from 1982 to 1985 chief conductor of the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich . From 1988 to 1999 he was the conductor of the Houston Symphony Orchestra , whose Conductor Laureate he is today. From 1995 to 2003 Christoph Eschenbach was Music Director of the Ravinia Festival , the summer festival (summer residence) of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra . From 1998 to 2004 he was director of the NDR Symphony Orchestra ; from 1999 to 2002 he was also the artistic director of the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival . He then took over as Music Director of the Philadelphia Orchestra from 2003 to 2008 and at the same time was Directeur musical of the Orchester de Paris from 2000 to 2010 . From 2010 to 2017 Christoph Eschenbach was the artistic director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, DC and its venue at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts . He also pursues a lively international guest conductor activity. He received the 2014 Grammy for the best classical collecting program . Since 2016 he has conducted The Turn of the Screw at La Scala in Milan .

In August 2019 he took over the Konzerthausorchester Berlin .

mentor

Christoph Eschenbach counts the lasting influence of many years of collaboration with Herbert von Karajan and George Szell among his conducting mentors . He himself also tried to get musical support. So he counts on his website u. a. the pianists Tzimon Barto and Lang Lang , the violinist Julia Fischer and the singer Renée Fleming among his protégés.

Christoph Eschenbach has been the musical director of the Orchestra Academy of the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival , an international orchestra made up of music students from all over the world, with whom he performs symphony and chamber concerts every summer and goes on tours , since 2003 .

repertoire

Christoph Eschenbach's pianistic and conducting repertoire ranges from the baroque to the present day . He is best known pianistically for his Schubert and Mozart recordings, the latter often together with Justus Frantz , with whom he met through their joint teacher Eliza Hansen . He also works as a song accompanist , for example with Peter Schreier, with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau , with whom he made a complete recording of Robert Schumann's songs , or with Matthias Görne .

In 1968 Eschenbach brought in Bielefeld , the second piano concerto by Hans Werner Henze for the premiere , which he had dedicated to him.

Eschenbach later renounced pianistic solo appearances and since then has often appeared with Tzimon Barto as a duo partner and still as a song accompanist.

Christoph Eschenbach conducts both concert and opera repertoire and always strives for performances and world premieres by contemporary composers.

His discography ( LP and CD ) as a pianist and conductor is rich and varied and reflects his artistic breadth.

Awards

Documentary film

Web links

swell

  1. ^ K.West Das Kulturmagazin des Westens , accessed on October 14, 2012
  2. ^ Homepage of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation
personal data
SURNAME Eschenbach, Christoph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German pianist and conductor
DATE OF BIRTH February 20, 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw