Jacob Leuschner (Piano) Friday 28th & Saturday 29th September 2012

Jacob Leuschner

Jacob was born in Freiburg in Breisgau in 1974, where he received initial piano instruction from Merlinde Weiss. After degrees from the Musikhochschule Freiburg with Helmut Barth and Michel Béroff, he continued his studies at the Musikhochschule Lübeck with Konrad Elser. Master classes with Leonard Hokanson, Karl Ulrich Schnabel, Claude Frank. Bernard Roberts and Sergio Fiorentino completed his musical education.

He has received numerous awards in major international competitions such as Viotti (Vercelli), Beethoven (Vienna), Schubert (Dortmund), Mozart (Salzburg), Leeds, Rina Sala Gallo (Monza) and the German Music Competition (Berlin), to mention only the most prominent. In addition, he was awarded the Possehl Music Prize, the Kai Uwe von Hassel Prize and the Wiesbaden Mozart Prize. He was repeatedly a participant in the “Bundesauswahl Konzerte Junger Künstler” (“National Selection of Concerts for Young Artists”), the German Music Council’s project for the development and promotion of young performers.

Since 1989, he has performed as a soloist in most European countries, the USA and the Far East. Jacob is much in demand as a chamber music partner, appearing at major festivals in Schleswig-Holstein, Ludwigsburg, Salzgitter, Oberstdorf, Lübeck, Bodenseefestival, Kronberg, Montfort l’Amaury and Esbjerg.

He has appeared as a soloist with the Klassische Philharmonie Bonn, the Hamburg Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra, the Lübeck Philharmonic, the Schleswig-Holstein State Youth Orchestra, the Brandenburg State Orchestra, the Orchester des Staatstheaters Darmstadt, the Reichenhall Philharmonic, the Freiburger Orchestergesellschaft, the Sinfonieorchester der Universität Mozarteum Salzburg, the Bachorchester Herzogtum Lauenburg and the Orchestra sinfonica giovanile del Piemonte. Conductors with whom he has worked include Heribert Beissel, Nicholas Carthy, Stefan Blunier, Thomas Mandl and Dennis Russell Davies. He has also made numerous radio and television recordings in Germany and elsewhere.

Jacob Leuschner is a dedicated chamber musician. In 1997, he founded the Ariadne Piano Trio (Basel) with cellist Angela Schwartz, his duo partner of many years, and the violinist Alexander van Wijnkoop. He was also a member of the Feuerbach Trio with Clemens Trautmann, clarinet, and Julian Steckel, cello. Other chamber music partners include the violinists Anke Dill and Keiko Urushihara, the cellists Sebastian Klinger and Maria Kliegel, pianists Michael Leuschner, Marianna Shirinyan and Yuuki Katsukawa as well as the BeethovenQuartett.

Jacob Leuschner has held teaching positions at the Musikhochschule in Lübeck and, as a guest professor, at the Musikhochschule FRANZ LISZT in Weimar. In April 2008 he was named professor for piano at the Cologne Musikhochschule. He is giving master classes in Germany, Switzerland, England, Denmark, Spain, China, Japan and Korea. In 2011 he was appointed Artistic Director of the Euro Music Festival.

His repertory ranges from the Virginalists to today’s contemporaries, with an emphasis on the masters of the Viennese classical period. He has performed the complete cycles of Beethoven and Mozart’s piano sonatas on several occasions, as well as the complete cycle of Schubert’s sonatas in 2009.