Elisabeth Brauß

Pianist Elisabeth Brauß was a member of the BBC New Generation Artist Scheme from 2018 to 2020 and has earned several other awards and honors. She was a prodigy who was touring internationally in her early teens. Brauß (she also uses Brauss) was born on January 19, 1995, in Hannover, Germany. Her father, Martin Brauß, was a pianist and university piano professor. Brauß took up the piano at age four, and at six, she was accepted as a student by Elena Levit, the mother of international piano star Igor Levit. In 2006, she performed at a "Wunderkinder" concert at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Stuttgart, and the following year, she began a stint at the Institute for Early Education for the Musically Talented (IFF) at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hannover, while continuing her studies with Levit and Matti Raekallio. In 2020, she entered the piano studio for Bernd Goetzke at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover; she has continued to study with Goetzke. She had already begun to rack up major prizes, including first-place showings at the national German "Jugend musiziert" competition in 2002 and 2004, the International Grotrian-Steinweg (Steinway) Competition in 2004, 2006, and 2007, and the Steinway Piano Competition in 2007 in Hamburg. Brauß has appeared internationally with major orchestras, including the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, among others. She has appeared regularly at Wigmore Hall in London and made her BBC Proms debut in 2021. Brauß has also appeared at such top halls as the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. She has continued to win prizes at such events as Ton und Sicherheit in Frankfurt in 2015 and the Piano Olympus competition in Bad Kissingen the following year. In 2017, Brauß released her debut album, appropriately titled Debut, on the Oehms Classics label, featuring works by Beethoven, Chopin, Prokofiev, and Michael Denhoff. In 2023, she was heard with pianist Peter Jablonski on a recording of Grażyna Bacewicz's Concerto for two pianos and orchestra. ~ James Manheim, Rovi