Michael Rische

Michael Rische, 2017

Michael Rische (* 1962 in Leverkusen ) is a German classical pianist and professor at the Cologne University of Music and Dance .

Live and act

Michael Rische was born in Leverkusen and grew up in Düsseldorf , where his father was in charge of the library of the city's art collections in the courtyard of honor . Due to his musical talent, he was accepted as a young student at the Robert Schumann University in Düsseldorf at the age of 14 , where he initially received his pianistic training from Max Martin Stein, which he later deepened with Rudolf Buchbinder in Vienna . In addition, Rische took composition lessons from Jürg Baur and Milko Kelemen .

As a concert pianist, he has received numerous invitations to perform in large concert halls at home and abroad. So far he has performed with the Staatskapelle Berlin , the Orchester National de Belgique, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and the BBC Symphony Orchestra London and has worked with conductors such as Sylvain Cambreling , Gerd Albrecht , Yuri Simonow, Michael Boder and Grant Llewellyn together.

In addition, Rische achieved international renown with his 17 CD recordings so far. At first he mainly performed Beethoven's piano works, later he preferred - also inspired by his personal acquaintance with Olivier Messiaen  - the works of French composers such as Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel . These recordings led French reviewers to compare them with the highly respected pianist Walter Gieseking . After Rische had meanwhile increasingly devoted himself to jazz , another focus of his work was the preoccupation with largely unknown piano concertos by Erwin Schulhoff and George Antheil , who incorporated jazz elements into their works.

In order to break up the rigid and prescribed sequence of classical concerts, Rische has been intensively occupied with the solo cadenzas of the great piano concertos for some time . Even if good cadenzas already exist for almost all works, Risches goal is to increasingly fall back on the origins of the improvised cadences. For example, he recorded his own improvisations for Mozart's Piano Concerto in D minor, K. 466, on the well-known cadenzas. He plans to continue the same in 2012 with Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37, to which he wants to add six cadenzas.

Rische is currently working on the piano music of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach , of which almost 53 piano concertos around two thirds are still relatively unknown. He presents three of these works in the latest CD recording with the Leipzig Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Morten Schuldt-Jensen .

In 1990, when he was only 28 years old, the Aachen department of the Cologne University of Music appointed him to be its lecturer and gave him a major in piano. With the exception of looking after a few individual students, Rische has meanwhile given up his class in Aachen and instead set up a new specialist seminar at the Cologne headquarters, which deals with the organizational fringe areas of a professional musician. In this highly frequented seminar, he teaches budding musicians of all disciplines in repertoire planning, communication, media and marketing.

Discography (selection)

• Saxophone and piano , Detlef Bensmann and Michael Rische, Koch-Classics, 1990
• Dietrich Erdmann: Music for saxophone , CD, Detlef Bensmann and Michael Rische, Koch-Classics, 1996
• With a touch of Jazz , Koch-Classics, 1996
• Debussy: Images I & II, Images oubliées, etc. Michael Rische CD, Koch-Classics, 1999
• Variations On BACH (piano works from baroque to modern) , EMI-Classics, 1999
• Antheil, Copland, Honegger, Ravel - Bamberger Symphoniker, Christoph Poppen, WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln, Steven Sloane, Israel Yinon - Piano Concertos of the 1920s , Vol I., Arte Nova Classics, 2002
• Schulhoff, Antheil, Gershwin - Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Wayne Marshall, WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln, Gunther Schuller - Piano Concertos of the 1920s , Vol I., Arte Nova Classics, 2003
• Gershwin / Antheil - Jazz Piano Concerts , Arte Nova Classics, 2009
• WA Mozart: Piano Concerto in D minor KV 466 with cadenzas by Beethoven, Brahms, Busoni, Hummel, FX Mozart, Rische and Cl. Schumann . - Michael Rische, piano, WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne, conductor: Howard Griffiths. Hänssler, 2011
• Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: Piano Concertos Wq 23 , Wq 31, Wq 112/1 , Michael Rische, Morten Schult-Jensen and the Leipzig Chamber Orchestra, Studio MDR. Leipzig, Hänssler, 2011
• Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: Piano Concerts Wq 14, Wq 17, Wq 43/4 , Michael Rische, Morten Schult-Jensen and the Leipzig Chamber Orchestra, Studio MDR. Leipzig, Hänssler, 2012
• Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: Piano Concerts Wq 22, Wq 43/5, Wq 46 , Michael Rische, Rainer Maria Klaas and the Leipzig Chamber Symphony , Studio MDR. Leipzig, Hänssler, 2013

Literature and Sources

• Transcription of the interview by Pedro Obiera with Michael Rische in the weekend supplement of the Aachener Nachrichten of December 3, 2011

Web links

• Literature by and about Michael Rische in the catalog of the German National Library
• Short biography in bach-cantatas (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Cadenzas to Mozart
2. ^ New recording of the works of Carl Philipp Emanuels Bach
3. ↑ Michael Rische seminar plan