Severin von Eckardstein

"C. Bechstein grand pianos give pianists with individual sound and subtlety all the possibilities."

Severin von Eckardstein

Severin von Eckardstein ranks among the major German pianists of his generation. Laureate of the 2003 “Grand Prix International Reine Élisabeth” held in Brussels, he has given solo recitals and concerts with great orchestras in famous venues throughout the world (Berlin, Munich, Madrid, Moscow, London, Paris, New York, Amsterdam, Trondheim, Budapest, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Seoul), performing under such conductors as Valery Gergiev, Philippe Herreweghe, Lothar Zagrosek and Marek Janowski. His debut concerts with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under Paavo Järvi and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra under Jaap van Zweden were much acclaimed. In November 2020, with most European concert halls closed due to the pandemic, he performed for the first time with the Mariinsky Orchestra under Valery Gergiev in Saint Petersburg and the Ural Philharmonic Orchestra in Yekaterinburg.

Von Eckardstein first studied under Professor Szczepanska and Professor Kämmerling, then under Professor Hellwig in Berlin, where he graduated as a concert pianist. Subsequently, he studied at the International Piano Academy Lake Como, took private lessons from Alfred Brendel and participated in several master classes. Since then, he has personally given master classes in South Korea, Finland and Belgium, as well as in the Netherlands and at the University of Fine Arts in Berlin.

Fond of chamber music, he regularly performs with such renowned musicians as Barnabás Kelemen, Isabelle van Keulen, Igor Levit and Isang Enders. Together with Franziska Hölscher, he also founded the chamber music festival “Klangbrücken” held at the Konzerthaus in Berlin.

Severin von Eckardstein has recorded a number of CDs with works by Schubert, Scriabin, Medtner, Wagner and Schumann, some of which won prizes. Most notable are The Nightwind, a CD with works by Schubert, Debussy and Medtner that he recorded in April 2012 at Duisburg’s Mercatorhalle on a C. Bechstein D 280 concert grand piano, and his CD with works by Debussy and Dupont that was released in 2018 and was awarded a “Diapason d’or”. His next project will be a recording of Prokofiev’s sonatas.

Photos: © Andreas Otto Grimminger/K&K, Yoshie Kuwayama

Severin von Eckardstein Live at Duisburg’s Mercatorhalle

Severin von Eckardstein performed at Duisburg’s Mercatorhalle during a Bechstein Piano Evening on 15 April 2012. The programme included Franz Schubert’s Sonata D 784, the second set of Claude Debussy’s Images, and the rarely performed Sonata in E Minor, Op. 25 No. 2, (Nachtwind) that Nikolai Medtner composed in 1911. All of these works can be heard on a live CD recording published under the label KuK.

The seriousness and intensity with which von Eckardstein imbues Schubert’s Sonata in A Minor; the wealth of tone colours this winner of Brussels’s Queen Elisabeth Music Competition draws from the C. Bechstein concert grand piano for Debussy’s Images; the virtuosity of his interpretation of Medtner’s sonata: all this really breathtaking. Ingo Hoddick states in an article published in the Rheinische Post: “Von Eckardstein is captivating through his music with clear tonal contours and his serene and passionate approach of playing the piano. He does it all with virtually no gimmickry or flamboyance – which cannot be said of many contemporary artists”.

The CD also includes three poetic pieces by Prokofiev, Scriabin and Tchaikovsky. These encores offered to the euphoric audience demonstrate von Eckardstein’s sensitivity in conjuring a magical atmosphere from a C. Bechstein concert grand piano.

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