Markus Becker

“As a virtuoso, Markus Becker is unsurpassable, a musician with insight, using his art to paint human souls.”
(Eleonore Büning, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in June 2009)

In international concert life, for many years now Markus Becker has been a persuasive and mightily articulate interpreter of the literature for piano ranging from Bach to Rihm, with a wealth of ideas as a compiler of programmes, and as a distinctive artist who has found a second home in jazz. He regularly performs at such major festivals as the Ruhr Piano Festival, the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, Rheingau Music Festival, Kissinger Sommer and the Beethoven Festival Bonn, and has also made guest appearances at the Salzburg Easter Festival.

Markus Becker has given concerts with Claudio Abbado and the Berliner Philharmonic Orchestra. Among his partners as conductors on several occasions have been Marcus R. Bosch, Alun Francis, Howard Griffiths, Carlos Kalmar, Eiji Oue and Steven Sloane. Markus Becker sets benchmarks in the concertos by Bach, Beethoven, Brahms and Gershwin, but also with rediscovered work like those by Draeseke, Hindemith, Jadassohn and Pfitzner, or the two concertos for the left hand by Franz Schmidt. Among his preferred partners in chamber music are Alban Gerhardt, Sharon Kam and Albrecht Mayer.

Markus Becker has received three ECHO-Klassik awards. He has been awarded the German Music Critics’ Prize and has several times been ‘Editor´s Choice’ in “The Gramophone”. Even today, his recording of the complete piano works by Max Reger is already legendary. This is available on 12 CDs in a slipcase. ‘FonoForum’ wrote of this all-encompassing, encyclopaedic achievement: “One of the rare truly great achievements of German pianism in the last 50 years.” However, Becker is no specialist in Reger alone, for the set was followed by recordings of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, Beethoven’s ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata and works by Jan Ladislav Dussek, as well as George Antheil’s piano concertos. In his recitals, Markus Becker is happy to combine rarities and rediscovered works with standard works from the classical/romantic literature. His mastery in jazz improvisation makes him an exceptional phenomenon, of a kind rare among classical pianists.

The Hyperion label has been producing Markus Becker’s recordings since 2008. Max Reger’s cello sonatas, with Alban Gerhardt, were released in quick succession – and awarded an ECHO-Klassik –, along with piano concertos by Draeseke and Jadassohn, and most recently, Reger’s arrangements of Bach organ works, just awarded the German Record Critics Prize. The next release will consist of a first recording of the piano concertos by Charles-Marie Widor, made with the BBC Welsh Orchestra and Thierry Fischer.

Markus Becker, born in 1963, studied with Karl-Heinz Kämmerling and received important impetuses from Alfred Brendel. Today he is linked with each of them in a friendship. Markus Becker combines his international concert activities with a great urge to pass on his wealth of different experiences. He has held a professorship at the University of Music and Drama in Hannover since 1993.