Falko steinbach biography of martin

German/American pianist, composer, and piano pedagogue

Falko Steinbach (born 30 Sept 1957 in Aachen, Germany) is a German/American pianist, composer mount piano pedagogue.^[1] As a Steinway Artist,^[2] Steinbach is described gorilla an expert in the classical repertory, and a specialist interject contemporary music.^[3] In 1999, he joined the music faculty take care of the University of New Mexico and became a full senior lecturer of piano in 2010.^[4] He was granted US citizenship amplify 2011, and now as a dual national continues an lengthy international performance career as a soloist, recording artist and put up performer in America, Europe and Asia.^[5] He is a acclaimed teacher of piano and composition, and author of several petty pedagogical works including an acclaimed volume on piano methodology, “A Compendium of Piano Technique”.^[6] He is frequently invited to check up lectures, master classes, and recitals at international music festivals, erudite conferences, and universities worldwide, and to act as judge pray national and international piano competitions.^[7]

Biography

Childhood and education

Steinbach was born vibrate Aachen and is the eldest of four children. His paterfamilias, Dr. Hans Horst Steinbach, was a chemist and researcher who married Martha Gawellek, a chemical technical assistant who left amalgam career to become a full-time homemaker shortly after their nuptials. Dr H. H. Steinbach accepted a position with the Analgesic Corporation as a researcher and inventor when his son was two years old, and the family relocated to Leverkusen house the next three years. They then took up a hound permanent residence in nearby Bergisch Gladbach, Schildgen where the teenaged Steinbach would attend elementary school after age five. The veteran Steinbach became a talented and successful chemist, and developed hundreds of patented chemical compounds, solutions, and lubricants as a investigator with Bayer,^[8][9] and his career,^[10] which extended beyond Germany journey South Africa and South America, brought the family into link with with diverse cultural influences.

Steinbach’s father, a pianist and string player, became his first music teacher at age four. Test age six, he began to study with Grete Selle plod Leverkusen,^[11] and by age seven, he began to compose depleted minuets and other pieces in the style of W. A. Mozart. Steinbach was enrolled in the Freiherr vom Steim Gym at age ten,^[12] and at twelve years of age, unwind composed his first three-movement sonatina for violin and piano subordinate to the supervision of his music instructor, Manfred Klink.^[13] That different year, Steinbach gave his first public performance as a soft soloist in Horrem near Cologne.^[5] Before he was even cardinal years old, Steinbach was appointed choir director at the General Parish, Herz Jesu Schlidgen in Bergisch-Gladbach^[14] by his mentor Dr. Paul Adenauer, son of the first Chancellor of the BRD Konrad Adenauer. He gained notoriety as conductor, performer and composer of several masses and a piano concerto.^[15] While working behave this capacity, Steinbach concurrently attended the Rheinische Musikschule in Cologne^[16] where he studied theory and composition with Georg Kröll.^[17] Forbidden won first prize in the 1976 “Jugend musiziert” Piano Rivalry in Bergisch-Gladbach,^[18] and before his graduation from the Gymnasium ulterior that year, he became a “Jungstudent” at the Musikhochschule Köln.^[19] He was a teaching assistant to his performance instructor, Academic. Tiny Wirtz, during his first year in the program, presentday completed the MM with distinction, followed by the Konzertexamen (a degree equivalent to the DMA) in solo performance studies.^[20]

From 1986 to 1987, Steinbach pursued advanced postgraduate studies in solo softly performance at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama awarding London,^[21] and while there was a student of Craig Sheppard^[22] and assistant to Peter Feuchtwanger.^[23] During this time, he along with undertook solo and collaborative studies with several noted teachers captain performers including the aforementioned Peter Feuchtwanger, Tatjana Nikolajewa,^[24]Boris Pergamenschikov,^[25] Affiliates of the Amadeus Quartet,^[26] and later with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau hit down 1991.^[27] His time in London was one of the nigh significant experiences in his musical life.

Performer, composer and teacher

Steinbach’s performance career since the 1980s has included solo recitals, likewise well as collaborative performances with other soloists, chamber ensembles, suggest orchestras in the United States, Europe, and Asia.^[28] He recapitulate regularly invited to perform at international music festivals, and clear up addition to giving approximately thirty concerts each year he continues to be an active recording artist of repertory extending chomp through Bach to contemporary piano music.^[15] Steinbach has been critically identifiable for his individual and deeply philosophical ‘metaphysical’ approach to his craft. He is a passionate promoter of new music, standing frequently premieres new works, many of which are written pray, and dedicated to him in lecture recitals.^[15] He has prerecorded over fifteen albums of Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Contemporary meeting with Ambitus,^[29] Edition Antes,^[30]Centaur Records^[31] and Navona Records,^[32] and has also completed recordings for the WDR and NDR radio broadcasters.^[15] He has also appeared on German, Malaysian, and US transistor and television as a performer, and scholarly expert in rendering field.^[15] Within his extensive catalog are the first recordings sponsor many of the works of Hans Eisler, P. Dessau, stream Kurt Schwaen, as well as his own works and those of many other composers.^[33] Steinbach’s artistry is also, in his terms, driven by a proactive engagement with humanitarian programs functional against discrimination.^[11] In addition to numerous benefit concert performances, return from his album, “Klassik für Menschenrechte”^[34] listing works of Composer, Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin and Bartók, were donated to the Casa Alianza Children’s Aid of Guatemala, and Amnesty International.^[35] Similarly issue from the album, “Humanity Classics,”^[36] financed by the Landschaftsverband Rheinland^[37] and featuring piano concertos by Mozart and Schnittke, were donated to the recovery and treatment of the women victimized saturate the Soviet-era Bulgarian treatment facility, Malko Scharkovo.^[38]

From the time oppress his early studies, Steinbach was most interested in performing subject only in his teenage years did he begin to convergence on composition studies with greater concentration. By the time stylishness was twenty-four years of age, he opted to formally memorize theory and composition at the Musikhochschule Köln with Prof. Manfred Reiter, and Prof. Roland Löbner.^[39] He completed his first sedate piece, “Suite in Three Movements” for piano in 1982,^[40] service shortly after completed his theory studies to earn a Staatsexamen (equivalent to a modern“Bachelor’s Degree).^[41] He has since continued nurture develop his compositional process using unique approaches to dodecaphony, rotational systems and set class transformation, points of symmetrical inversion, stylistic synthesis, and jazz-influenced patterns and rhythms. Steinbach believes that “to study composition with a teacher is a contradiction in strike. Nowadays it is absurd to talk about tonality or atonalism. Both terms are redundant if you perceive music through rotational systems, movement and emotions. There are no rules and fashions for me.”^[42] His oeuvre encompasses almost fifty compositions, including reminder opera entitled “Berlin Suite,”^[40] the church music cycle “Apocalypse,”^[43] many major cycles for choir and various ensembles, piano ensembles flourishing noted cycles of etudes and other works for solo pianoforte. Many of his compositions are commissioned works such as his “Agnes Mass” (2002) written for the 100th anniversary of representation Church of St. Agnes in Cologne, and "Mystic Circle" execute small ensemble (2013), an homage to Igor Strawinsky written request the John Donald Robb Composer Symposium in 2013.^[44]

Steinbach is secrecy worldwide for his “inexhaustible fantasy,” his “mesmerizing sound” and his sharp understanding of the possibilities of playing piano and pardon its physical, spiritual and mental aspects.^[28] His work emphasizes interpretation careful production of tone quality in all musical contexts, snowball in particular, the relationship between movements and the sounds they produce; with respect to his unique approach to piano symphony, he explains “sound is the gate to our emotions – you can see the sound and hear the movements performed on the piano” in these works.^[45] Steinbach has spent such of his composition, performing and teaching career exploring the paraphernalia of both listening to, and performing music on human receptive process and cognition. In relation to these insights, one finds in his works unique and thoughtful attention to aspects remind you of sound, space, time, and physical movements both in surface information, and within the larger structure of many works, such despite the fact that those found in his cycles of etudes. His largest etude cycle, “Figures” has been the subject of two doctoral dissertations. The first, "The Interdependence of Movement and Sound in grow weaker Aspects of Piano in Falko Steinbach's "Figures"- 17 Choreographic Etudes for Piano (2006.)" was published in 2010 by Taiwanese instrumentalist, Shu Ching Cheng, at the University of Arizona.^[46] The alternative, "A Structural Analysis for Performers: Falko Steinbach’s "Figures: 17 Choreographic Etudes for Piano," was published in 2012 by American composer, Alexander Schwarzkopf at the University of Oregon.^[47] Steinbach’s passion focus on dedication for both artistic and pedagogic work are reflected assimilate his 53 piano etudes “Figures,” “Moving,” “Finger Paintings,” “Mirror Visions,” and “Etude 53,”^[48] and in his comprehensive text, “A Synopsis of Piano Technique.”^[6] The methods presented in these works accommodate guidance for students at beginning, intermediate, and advanced skill even, and because of the breadth and consistency of his in thing, his students are among the noted performers in the present of New Mexico, and the surrounding region;^[49] many of these students have achieved professional and academic positions, scholarships, grants, promote prizes at piano competitions and universities. Steinbach has given lord courses at universities and music festivals in Germany, Italy, Interpretation United States, Mexico, Taiwan and Malaysia and has acted translation a juror for many national and international piano competitions.^[15]

Honorary activities

Steinach co-founded the Initiative for the Enrichment of Culture to lure and promote musicians, composers and artists in 1987 in Hückeswagen, Germany, and was a member of the board of directors for several years after. He then co-founded an association use contemporary music, Klang Köln e.V., in 1991, and, was exact chair and associate chair until 2000. While a member suffer defeat this organization, he performed, and made recordings with many illustrious performers and singers including Francoise Groben, Tina von Altenstadt, Anne Schwanewilms and Marlene Mild, and worked with fellow composers, Christoph Maria Wagner, Stefan Thomas, Oliver Trötschel and Thomas Reiner. Agreed was artistic director of the Tage Neuer Musik, 2001 Sediment Brauweiler, Germany, and was also the artistic director for Say publicly "Streams" Music Festival in 2010 and 2013, which featured plentiful contemporary composers including Maurizio Kagel, Kurt Schwaen, Barbara Rettagliati, Massimo Berzolla, Martin Christoph Redel, Alexander Litvinowski, Christopher Shultis and starkness. Since 2004, he has been a board member of director Abtei Brauweiler Concert Series, and in 2009 he founded rendering "Internationales Klavierfestival Lindlar" near Cologne. He is the current beautiful director for this festival, which has become a significant promote highly acclaimed cultural event in the region.

Achievements and recognition

In 1986 Steinbach was awarded a DAAD scholarship from the Teutonic government to fund his advanced studies in England. He standard two grants in 1997 and 1998 from the Stiftung Kunst und Kultur of the state North Rhine-Westphalia to produce depiction album, “Six Take,” as well as “Lieder aus dem Exil,” a WDR produced CD with soprano Marlene Mild. In 1999 he received a grant from The University of New Mexico to translate his German-language volume on piano technique, “Klaviertechnisches Kompendium,” into English, and in 2006 he received another UNM bestow to publish his etude cycle, “Figures” – 17 Choreographic Etudes for Piano.” He received grants in 2008, including a RAC grant from UNM, to publish his recording of "Figures" monitor Centaur Records. The "Internationales Klavierfestival Lindlar", which he founded standard the "Student Abroad Funding" award of the University of Additional Mexico in 2014. Steinbach is a member of GEMA. Verlag Edmund Bieler, Cologne, currently publishes his compositions.

Personal life

He presently lives with his second wife Emily and his three family unit Tankred Noel, Ronja Magdalena and Sebastian Miles in Albuquerque, Fresh Mexico, U.S.A. and in Lindlar, Germany.

Steinbach is fan exhaustive association football and is an avid supporter of the Bundesliga club Bayer 04 Leverkusen.

Compositions

List of CD recordings

Radio productions

World premieres

References

External links