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The German pianist, Konstanze Eickhorst, was a pupil of Karl-Heinz Kämmerling in Hannover and Vlado Perlemuter in Paris. Joachim Kaiser has praised her not only for her “immaculate command of piano technique”, but also for the “intensity of expression” that is her particular hallmark. The jury at the renowned Clara Haskil Competition thought so too, as did the jury of the Géza Anda Competition, at both of which she won first prize. She has also won prizes at the Toronto Bach Competition (in memoriam Glenn Gould) and at Belgium’s Concours Reine Elisabeth.
Konstanze Eickhorst appears at many leading international festivals, including Lucerne, Montreux, Salzburg, Ravinia (Chicago) and Berlin. She has also performed with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Tonhalle Orchestra of Zürich and others, with conductors such as Christoph Eschenbach, Andrew Davis, Peter Schneider, Manfred Honeck and Ingo Metzmacher. She has been privileged to work in a solo capacity with Sándor Végh and Ferdinand Leitner.
Konstanze Eickhorst is a member of the Linos Ensemble, which performs in combinations ranging from duo to nonet in concert halls throughout the world and has numerous awards and CD recordings to its credit. For many years she has enjoyed a fruitful and successful partnership with Karl Michael Vogler, one of Germany’s leading actors. During the 2006-2007 season the Eickhorst-Vogler Duo has been presenting a programme centred on the famous chapter in Thomas Mann’s novel Doktor Faustus, in which the fictitious music-lover Wendell Kretzschmar subjects L.v. Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 32 in C minor Op. 111 to close analysis - a virtuoso musical-cum-literary event totally without precedent in the concert hall.
Alongside her activities as a solo pianist, Konstanze Eickhorst sees it as her mission to transmit the fruit of her experience to the younger generation of pianists. She was one of the youngest professors in the story of German music-academies when, in 1989, she embarked on her successful teaching career at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hannover. In 1998 the Musikhochschule Lübeck invited her to join its staff. She now conducts master-classes for soloists and ensembles, and is frequently on the panel of judges at competitions in Germany and abroad.
The pianist Konstanze Eickhorst is not a musician who is easily pigeonholed: she is a soloist, a chamber musician and a teacher. “These are the three pillars on which my musical life is built,” she said in a recently broadcast interview. |
