Tobias Koch (pianist)

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Tobias Koch (born September 11, 1968 in Kempen , Niederrhein ) is a German pianist .

Life

Tobias Koch (2009)

Tobias Koch studied from 1989 to 1995 in the master classes at the Robert Schumann University in Düsseldorf and at the music academies in Vienna, Graz and Zurich. He received artistic inspiration from such diverse personalities as the pianists David Levine , Roberto Szidon , Jos van Immerseel and Malcolm Bilson . His studies were funded by the German Academic Exchange Service ( DAAD ), the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung and the Richard-Wagner-Verband (Bayreuth scholarship). Since then his concert activities have taken him to almost all European countries.

Numerous awards document his artistic activity, including the Music Prize of the State Capital Düsseldorf (1999), the Schmolz and Bickenbach Prize of the Robert Schumann University of Düsseldorf and the Ernst Klusen Culture Prize of the City of Viersen . As a soloist, chamber musician and lied accompanist , he appears at major festivals in Germany and abroad, including the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival , Ludwigsburg Castle Festival , Beethoven Festival Bonn, Chopin Festival Warsaw, Verbier Festival, Rheingau Music Festival , Schumann Festival Düsseldorf, Zwickau Schumann Festival, Leipzig Schumann Week and at the Mendelssohn Festival in the Leipzig Gewandhaus . Tobias Koch is also active in the musical dramaturgical field: he publishes articles on performance practice, rhetoric and musical aesthetics , writes accompanying texts for his CD recordings, develops his own concert series and drafts program concepts. In 2007 he founded the Norbert Burgmüller Society in Düsseldorf, of which he was first chairman until 2012. He maintains close cooperation with numerous institutions and museums that keep historical musical instruments (including Museum for Art and Industry Hamburg - Beurmann Collection, Museum for Musical Instruments Leipzig , Museum Vleeshuis Antwerp / Belgium, Clavierland Kremsmünster / Austria). As a pianist familiar with historical performance practice, Tobias Koch looks after and collects instruments from important instrument makers such as Johann Bernhard Klems and Erard .

1995–1999 he taught at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and gave master classes at the European Academy for Music and Performing Arts in Montepulciano , Kammeroper Schloss Rheinsberg and Oberstdorfer Musiksommer, since 2008 at the Robert Schumann University in Düsseldorf. Since 2000 he has been working as the official pianist and coordinator for major music competitions and festivals such as “ Concours Reine Elisabeth Bruxelles” and “ Verbier Festival and Academy ”.

repertoire

Tobias Koch (2009)

Tobias Koch is equally dedicated to historically informed piano playing as well as musicological studies. He belongs to a new generation of pianists who, with unorthodox performance practice, play any kind of music on the most suitable keyboard instrument, be it clavichord , harpsichord , fortepiano , romantic and modern concert grand piano or organ . Accordingly, his repertoire encompasses works by Renaissance composers such as Orlando Gibbons through to Karlheinz Stockhausen's avant-garde compositions.

With a particular affinity for encyclopedic projects, he performs all of the piano works by Joseph Haydn , Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , Franz Schubert , Norbert Burgmüller , Robert Schumann and Arnold Schönberg . In recent years, Tobias Koch has made a name for himself primarily as a Schumann interpreter who is familiar with historically informed performance practice.

In the meantime Tobias Koch has participated in over 200 radio and TV productions, including WDR , SWR , BR , MDR , NDR , Deutschlandfunk , DLR Kultur as well as Radio Klara , BRT, RTBF (Belgium) and radio stations in Russia, Hungary and the Czech Republic , Italy, Holland and France.

Discography (selection)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Cook, Tobias
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German pianist
DATE OF BIRTH September 11, 1968
PLACE OF BIRTH Kempen , Lower Rhine