Biographical Info

“An expressive musician par excellence who continues the specifically German tradition of piano playing through his artistry.” This is how the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung once described pianist Matthias Kirschnereit, summing up the many qualities that characterize his playing: freshness and inspiration, a naturally breathing sense of phrasing, clear articulation, and finely judged flexibility of tempo.

The pianist himself puts it more simply: “I search for the human message,” says Kirschnereit. “Composers have encoded so much into their music: pain, longing, joy, triviality, and despair. The better I get to know them, the greater my admiration becomes. I live, feel, and suffer with them.”

When studying a score, Kirschnereit proceeds with strict analytical discipline, only to trust his intuition completely in performance. His guiding principle is inner necessity: the search for the ideal phrase, played exactly this way and no other. Perhaps it is this sense of urgency, beyond mere pianistic excellence, that repeatedly inspires critics to enthusiastic praise. Fono Forum attributed to him “qualities of intimacy reminiscent of Horowitz,” while WDR praised his “passion and sensitivity.” Piano News wrote: “Matthias Kirschnereit succeeds in creating a captivating psychological portrait of the composer.”

Born in 1962, Kirschnereit has appeared on concert stages throughout Germany, Europe, the Americas, and East Asia for decades. He performs worldwide with leading orchestras including the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, New City Philharmonic Orchestra Tokyo, Residentie Orkest The Hague, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Orquesta Filarmónica de Gran Canaria, SWR Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Bamberg Symphony, NDR Radiophilharmonie, Camerata Salzburg, and the Munich Chamber Orchestra. He has collaborated with conductors such as Hartmut Haenchen, Marcus Bosch, Christopher Hogwood, Andrew Manze, Sándor Végh, Michael Sanderling, Frank Beermann, Alexander Liebreich, Ariane Matiakh, Yuri Temirkanov, and Alondra de la Parra.

Nearly 40 recordings document his artistic career, from his prizewinner’s album following the German Music Competition in 1989, through his complete recording of Mozart’s piano concertos with the Bamberg Symphony, to the 2019 album Concertant, featuring all of Robert Schumann’s works for piano and orchestra with the Konzerthausorchester Berlin under Jan Willem de Vriend. His most recent major recording, released in 2022, is a complete recording of the rarely performed Haydn Piano Concertos with the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra Heilbronn, performed as both soloist and director.

Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Brahms are the fixed stars in Kirschnereit’s musical universe. He is equally devoted to works by Mozart, Chopin, and Rachmaninoff. His extensive complete recordings also explore lesser-known works by famous composers, including the reconstructed Mendelssohn Piano Concerto in E minor, which earned him an ECHO Klassik Award in 2009. He has recorded all of Handel’s organ concertos in his own arrangements for piano. His 2020 Beethoven anniversary album, Beethoven Unknown, featuring overlooked gems by the composer, immediately entered the Top Ten of the German Classical Charts. In 2021, he recorded Hummel’s Piano Concerto alongside concert pieces by Weber and Mendelssohn with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra under Michael Sanderling.

His chamber music partners have included violinists Christian Tetzlaff, Lena Neudauer, and Daniel Hope; horn player Felix Klieser; clarinettist Sharon Kam; cellists Julian Steckel and Daniel Müller-Schott; as well as the Minguet Quartet, Aris Quartet, and Amaryllis Quartet.

Unlike many celebrated pianists, Kirschnereit did not follow the path of a child prodigy. As he puts it, he “caught the very last train for a pianist’s career.” Between the ages of nine and fourteen, he lived with his parents in Namibia, far from the educational opportunities necessary for aspiring professional pianists. In 1976 he returned alone to Germany and became a junior student of Renate Kretschmar-Fischer at the Detmold Academy of Music. “It was a shock to see and hear what my contemporaries could already play,” he recalls. Determined to succeed, he left school before completing his Abitur (German secondary education qualification). Successes at competitions, including the Géza Anda Competition in Zurich, proved his decision right.

Today, Kirschnereit passes on his experience and convictions as a professor at the Rostock University of Music and Theatre. He is passionately committed to the educational initiative Rhapsody in School and the cultural project TONALi. Since 2012, he has also attracted growing audiences to churches, manor houses, and libraries across East Frisia through the carefully curated programming of his Gezeitenkonzerte (Tide Concerts) festival. Renowned artists such as Grigory Sokolov regularly travel to what Kirschnereit calls a “festival among friends.” He also sees it as a counterbalance to the modern culture of musical events, which he sometimes describes with amused detachment as a “glamorous travelling circus.”

Because of his work in Rostock and East Frisia, he has earned the affectionate nickname “the Coastal Pianist.” He and his family live in the port city of Hamburg, and even when it comes to football, he remains loyal to Germany’s maritime north, sporting its traditional green-and-white colours.