Christopher Czaja Sager

Christopher Czaja Sager (* 1941 in New York City ) is an American pianist of Anglo - Irish and Polish descent. He has lived in the Netherlands since 1975, taking citizenship in 2004.

Life

Christopher Czaja Sager comes from a family of artists and writers. His talent was discovered and promoted early on. He studied at the Juilliard School a . a. with Emil Danenberg and Rosina Lhévinne and won several important music competitions in the USA. In 1969 he took part in the Viennese piano master class with Paul Badura-Skoda , Alfred Brendel and Jörg Demus and received a scholarship.

In 1970 he went on two concert tours in Europe. In 1972 he made his debut at New York's Lincoln Center and was then invited by Olga Kussewizki as the only pianist for her benefit concert on the 100th birthday of Sergei Rachmaninov in 1973. 1975 Czaja Sager settled in the Netherlands. Further international concert tours followed. a. with performances of all of Alexander Scriabin's works . The Bach anniversaries in 1985 and 2000 were the occasion for an intensive examination of Johann Sebastian Bach and cyclical performances of his piano works. Under well-known conductors he worked as a soloist in the piano concertos of the Classical and Romantic periods. Numerous radio, television and CD productions document the versatility and quality of his interpretations.

After Czaja Sager's debut in Berlin , Gottfried Eberle wrote in the Taz :

“With the phenomenal talent of Christopher Czaja Sager from the USA, who grew up there in the best piano tradition, all the qualities are gathered in him that have become rare in his generation: a perfect technique as a matter of course, but above all a sense of the fantastic, the poetic, the characteristic in the great piano music of the 19th century. To put it more concretely, this means that his playing has a variety of radiant colors, that it is multidimensional, foreground and background are carefully graded against each other and has a magical agility in terms of time, which allows the music to breathe in wide arcs. "

Web links

• Literature by and about Christopher Czaja Sager in the catalog of the German National Library
• Personal internet presence
• Christopher Czaja Sager on YouTube

Individual evidence

1. ↑ All biographical information from Czaja Sager's website ( memento of the original from September 1, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ↑ CD booklet  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 162 kB)