Franz-Josef Birk

Franz-Josef Birk (* 1949 in Düsseldorf ) is a German concert pianist and music producer .

Life

In 1961, after two years of private piano lessons, Birk was accepted into the piano class of Bernhard Roderburg at the Robert Schumann Conservatory in Düsseldorf. In 1963 he made his public debut with piano music by Béla Bartók and drew attention to the press with “his seventh sense for the agogic nuance , a skill that can hardly be learned” (Rheinische Post). In the same year he won his first piano competition at Jugend musiziert in Düsseldorf with piano music by Beethoven, which was followed by further prizes in Essen, Marl and Munich with works by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and Chatschaturian until 1965. Already at a young age he played Mozart's Sonata in A major KV 331 in the Solingen town hall with "that kind of emotional urgency that made Mozart no longer feel like a classic, but welcomed him more as a contemporary one" (Solinger Tageblatt). In 1968 he continued his pianistic studies in the master classes with Professors Günter Ludwig , Hansotto Schmidt and Alfons Kontarsky at the State University of Music in Cologne .

After completing his pianistic studies, after a guest appearance in 1974 in the series Heinersdorff - Matinéen Düsseldorf, he played his first own three-part piano cycle with the main works by Robert Schumann in connection with works by other composers in the years 1976 to 1980 exclusively on Bösendorfer and sparked off by the press enthusiastic discussions also because of the development of the unique sound of the Viennese grand piano. From 1980 to 1985 he took a break from public concerts and devoted himself to music criticism for both the Westdeutsche Zeitung and the Rheinische Post .

In 1986 he returned to the concert podium in Düsseldorf with a twelve-part Beethoven cycle and at the same time opened the series of Aton concerts, which enables artists to perform in the state capital to this day. In 1991 he gave a concert in Baden-Baden in the final concert of an international series of concerts for the inauguration of the then new Steinway grand piano in the Weinbrennersaal . After a piano recital in 1994 in the series of the Schlosskonzerte Bühlerhöhe , he founded the Fête Chopin series there in 1995 - a concert form which shows Chopin's piano music and his literary environment in the interrelationships with other composers. The Badische Nachrichten writes about a central musical event and reports on phenomenal piano art. This Chopin cycle runs simultaneously in the Bösendorfer Hall in Düsseldorf and Vienna . Further stations of his appearances have so far been Oberhausen, Essen, Berlin and Montreux-Vevey.

The pianist continued his Vienna Chopin cycle on October 9, 2009 in the Bösendorfer Hall with the theme: Chopin congratulates Mendelssohn-Bartholdy on 200 years.

In 1994 he started the production of a CD series with Düsseldorf sound engineer and filmmaker Ulrich Rydzewski, which for the first time presented the top products of today's concert grand piano construction to the public. Recordings were made on concert grand pianos from Steinway & Sons , Bösendorfer , Blüthner, personally selected by the pianist , as well as a first production of the Yamaha S series .

Web links

• Portrait at aton-recordings
• Entries on the Franz-Josef Birk record label in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Source of the biographical information: http://www.boesendorfer.com/de/news-archiv.html?page=6073  ( 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.