Markus Becker
Today, his concert performances set standards of the classics and create a fresh impression of more contemporary composers.
For many years among international concert pianists, Markus Becker has convinced his audiences and critics alike as a highly formative interpreter of piano literature from Bach to Rihm, a program director rich in ideas and an established artist whose second home is jazz.
Born in 1963 into a musical family, as a three-year-old he was already attracted to keyboard instruments. In his youth, his musical experiences ranged from studying the piano, singing in the Knabenchor Hannover (Boys Choir), forming a chamber music ensemble, playing in jazz and rock bands and composing stage music. After his first awards in various youth competitions, he continued his piano studies 1982 in Hanover alongside master courses and supplemented by intensive study of chamber music. He won various national and international awards, including the first prize at the International Brahms Competition in Hamburg in 1987.
Today, his concert performances set standards of the classics, and create a fresh impression of more contemporary composers. Being a virtuoso jazz improviser, he is also an exception among classical pianists, and regularly performs at numerous festivals in Germany.
Markus Becker has played with orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, RSB Berlin, the radio symphony orchestras of the NDR, WDR and SWR in Germany, and the BBC Welsh Orchestra under conductors such as Claudio Abbado, Howard Griffiths, Michael Sanderling, Steven Sloane, and Marcus Bosch.
Becker's main interest is chamber music. As an interpreter, professor and festival manager he devotes a great deal of attention to this specific field.
Chamber music is also of central importance to Markus Becker's teaching:
Since 1993, he has been a professor at the Hanover Academy for Music, Theater and Media. He supervises a class of pianists and chamber ensembles which have gained widespread attention with their repeated award-winning performances. He is director of the Institute for Chamber Music and of his academy's annual Chamber Music Festival.
With his CD recordings, Becker is the three-time winner of the "ECHO-Klassik" award as well as the German Critics Choice Award and the "Editor's Choice" award in the British trade journal GRAMOPHONE. Besides his recordings for EMI, Decca, cpo and Thorofon, today, he produces most of his recordings under the British label Hyperion Records. Becker's recording of Max Reger's complete piano works on 12 CDs (Thorofon) is already considered legendary. FonoForum's assessment of this major encyclopedic achievement: "One of those rare and truly major achievements of piano artistry in the past 50 years."