Alexander Lonquich

Versatile pianist Alexander Lonquich is comfortable and successful both as a soloist and as a collaborative artist. He has a heavy schedule at international festivals and is also a conductor and educator. Lonquich has a substantial recording catalog and has recorded for both the specialist label ECM and the mainstream EMI Classics, among others. He released a recording of Beethoven's complete piano concertos with the Münchener Kammerorchester on ECM in 2024. Lonquich was born in Trier in far western Germany, on August 28, 1960. He studied with major pianists and pedagogues, including Paul Badura-Skoda, Andrzej Jasiński, and Ilonka Deckers-Küszler. Lonquich scored an early breakthrough when he took first prize at the Alessandro Casagrande Piano Competition in Terni, Italy, in 1977. This garnered the teenager invitations from several European orchestras. He went on to earn an honorable mention at the X International Chopin Competition in Warsaw in 1980. After some years of orchestral and festival appearances, Lonquich released his debut album in 1990, backing violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann in a program of Mozart violin sonatas. In 1994, the same pair issued an album of French violin and piano works, and an earlier Mozart album was reissued by EMI that same year. Lonquich has appeared with such top orchestras as the Vienna Philharmonic, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London, the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, and the Münchener Kammerorchester. He branched out into conducting in the 2000s and has often led the Camerata Salzburg from the keyboard in Mozart piano concertos. Mozart remains a focus of his repertory, but he performs music ranging as far forward as the contemporary period. In addition to concerto appearances, Lonquich is active as a solo recitalist and as a chamber player, with such prestigious collaborators as violinist Christian Tetzlaff, violist Veronika Hagen, and the Auryn Quartett. He has appeared as far afield as North America, Asia, and Australia. In 2002, he joined the Auryn Quartett on ECM for a recording of music by Gideon Lewensohn, and he has continued to record on ECM as well as Orfeo, Claves, and frequently, beginning in the late 2010s, Alpha, where he issued the 2018 album Schubert 1828, covering music from the end of that composer's life. In 2024, he played and conducted a cycle of Beethoven's piano concertos with the Münchener Kammerorchester on ECM. By that time, his recording catalog comprised more than 40 entries. Lonquich is the artistic director of the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole in Italy and is in demand for master classes around Germany and internationally. ~ James Manheim, Rovi