About Ruhr Piano Festival

4 May – 19 July 2013

In the Ruhr Piano Festival’s successful history of 22 years, the festival was able to establish a unique reputation worldwide that is very popular with the national as well as the international audience. Having built up this prestigious festival over the last decades, the Ruhr Piano Festival can proudly look into a prospering future, maintaining and expanding the festival’s goals.

Every year from May to July, the Ruhr Piano Festival – celebrated by FonoForum magazine as “the most important piano festival in the world” – presents fifty to sixty concerts featuring outstanding artists from a host of different nations, thus offering a truly unique quantity and frequency of musical activities. The great masters of their craft (including Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Martha Argerich, Emanuel Ax, Daniel Barenboim, Tzimon Barto, Elena Bashkirova, Alfred Brendel, Michel Camilo, Chick Corea, Leon Fleisher, Nelson Freire, Hélène Grimaud, Herbie Hancock, Abdullah Ibrahim, Keith Jarrett, Katia & Marielle Labèque, Lang Lang, Elisabeth Leonskaja, Robert Levin, Radu Lupu, Gabriela Montero, Ivo Pogorelich, Maurizio Pollini, André Previn, András Schiff, Grigory Sokolov, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Arcadi Volodos and Krystian Zimerman) regularly follow Franz Xaver Ohnesorg’s invitation to perform in the Ruhr region. The result is a multifaceted series of unique recitals and concerts. Year after year, a considerable number of young pianists, competition laureates and outstandingly talented newcomers are also invited by the Festival Director to perform at the Ruhr, since effective, long-term support of young artists is one of its sustaining goals.

Classical and jazz music, solo performances, chamber and orchestra concerts, masterclasses and Lieder recitals all reflect the exceptionally rich array of events you will encounter at the Ruhr Piano Festival. Each year, the Festival invites contemporary composers to write new works: thus, it has hosted the premières of over sixty compositions. Furthermore, its annual choice of overarching themes and cycles is a guarantee for novelty, high standards and unexpected insights. Such unique quality is reflected in a constant increase in attendance, with recent averages of 60,000 per concert season. Over seventy CDs in the Edition Klavier-Festival Ruhr present the Festival’s wide range of styles and performances.

The Ruhr Piano Festival’s extensive, highly innovative Education Program is currently made up of eleven different modules, three of which deserve particular mention. Children in the age of two to six are introduced to the fascinating world of music in the Little Piano School. School-age piano pupils get to meet famous artists and learn something about their extraordinary abilities and vast knowledge close up and first hand in the Encounters sessions. Thanks to an interdisciplinary approach, children and teenagers from diverse social backgrounds are encouraged to develop long-term interest in the arts by helping them discover their creative abilities in the Discovery Projects.

For full information, visit the Ruhr Piano Festival website.