Steffen Schleiermacher

Pianist Steffen Schleiermacher is one of Germany's leading advocates for contemporary music. He is equally active as a composer and has often been honored with awards and prestigious residencies. In addition to solo appearances, Schleiermacher is active as a chamber musician and accompanist. In the latter capacity, he added to his large recording catalog in 2024, backing baritone <a href="spotify:artist:2kIdBmk7V7HePGesmkz61c">Holger Falk</a> on the album Georges Auric: Mélodies & Chansons.

Schleiermacher was born in Halle, then in East Germany. He is distantly related to 19th century theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher. His education took place at one of the country's top universities, the Musikhochschule Leipzig, where he studied piano under Gerhard Erber, composition under Friedrich Schenker, and conducting under Günter Blumhagen. Schleiermacher also studied composition at the DDR Akademie der Künste and took private piano lessons with <a href="spotify:artist:3mabOGxmXQo74MHWrzsJlz">Aloys Kontarsky</a>.

It was as a composer that he first gained recognition, winning an award at the Gaudeamus Competition for composition in 1985, and the Hanns Eisler Prize in 1989 for his Concerto for viola and chamber ensemble. Schleiermacher held composition residences at the Villa Massimo, Rome (1992), and the Cité des Arts, Paris (1998). He is interested in non-Western music, and his compositions show influences from, among other traditions, the music of Indonesia's gamelan orchestras, and Japanese traditional music. As a pianist, Schleiermacher has performed concertos with the <a href="spotify:artist:0SlNRZ8zBLAgyB1lsoYxAa">Gewandhaus Orchestra</a> of Leipzig, the <a href="spotify:artist:5jSyEHI4tPkBgp84luyqpO">Munich Philharmonic Orchestra</a>, and the <a href="spotify:artist:4NzLn7UyhvBlgzhF7WwMM1">Orchestre de la Suisse Romande</a>, among other top ensembles. An early Schleiermacher recording was the recital The Bad Boys!, devoted to the American avant-garde composers <a href="spotify:artist:00iJnnUu476m1HX16e3por">George Antheil</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:0AMoPrd9OLxMC38dQPnSQA">Henry Cowell</a>, and <a href="spotify:artist:4xEN7P6qTshUAylmnZhaFB">Leo Ornstein</a>. To explore his interests in contemporary music, he formed the <a href="spotify:artist:55cx4TKa1bwymAS5Mlr6cY">Ensemble Avantgarde</a>, and as a soloist, he has performed and recorded music by contemporary Japanese and Indonesian composers.

On recordings, Schleiermacher has focused almost exclusively on music from the early 20th century to the present. Schleiermacher's 2003 album Hommage à Walter Spies memorialized the Dutch artist who invigorated the contemporary art scene on the Indonesian island of Bali. He has recorded well over 80 albums, most them for Germany's <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22MDG%22">MDG</a> label; these include a complete cycle of the piano music of <a href="spotify:artist:1Z3fF5lZdCM0ZHugkGoH8s">John Cage</a> and another of <a href="spotify:artist:459INk8vcC0ebEef82WjIK">Satie</a>'s piano music, the sixth volume of which appeared in 2019. The largest single group of his albums is devoted to the music of <a href="spotify:artist:1Z3fF5lZdCM0ZHugkGoH8s">Cage</a>. Schleiermacher has often appeared as an accompanist, and he backed baritone <a href="spotify:artist:2kIdBmk7V7HePGesmkz61c">Holger Falk</a> on a series of albums in the 2020s devoted to vocal works by the French 1920s avant-garde composers known as Les Six. In 2024, the pair were heard on an album in that series, Georges Auric: Mélodies & Chansons. Schleiermacher has won Germany's coveted ECHO Klassik award multiple times. ~ James Manheim, Rovi