GRAUSCHUMACHER PIANO DUO

Andreas Grau and Götz Schumacher, with their virtuosity and talent for putting together varied and innovative programmes, bringing together music of different epochs and styles, have established themselves as one of the world’s top piano duos. The vast breadth of the duo’s expressiveness has garnered it invitations to various festivals, including Schwetzingen, Salzburg, and the Piano Festival La Roque d’Anthéron, and famous concert halls such as the Cologne and Berlin philharmonics and Zurich’s Tonhalle, resulting in partnerships with renowned conductors such as Michael Gielen, Lothar Zagrosek, Emmanuel Krivine, Heinz Holliger, Kent Nagano, Bertrand de Billy, Andrey Boreyko, Georges Prêtre, and Zubin Mehta.

Their most recent projects have included concerts with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, SWR Symphony, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester, Bavarian State Orchestra, Vienna Radio Symphony, and Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. The duo has performed at the Rheingau Music Festival, Klarafestival in Brussels, Salzburg’s Mozarteum, Rotterdam’s De Doelen, Leipzig’s Gewandhaus, Vienna’s Konzerthaus, Ghent’s Handelsbeurs, and Brugges’s Concertgebouw. Upcoming orchestral engagements will take the duo again to the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra and to the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra.

Through their performances of well-known orchestral concertos by Bach, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Bartók, and Poulenc as well as transcriptions (e.g. Max Reger’s version of the introduction to Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, György Kurtág’s transcriptions of Bach and Purcell, as well as arrangements by Ferruccio Busoni), the GrauSchumacher Piano Duo is always striving for new ways to extend the repertoire for two pianos and orchestra. They have, for example, initiated an arrangement by Stefan Heucke of Franz Liszt’s famous Concerto pathétique (originally for two unaccompanied pianos) for two pianos and orchestra. Inspired by the duo’s virtuosic playing, some of the most important contemporary composers have written new concertos for Andreas Grau and Götz Schumacher, most recently Peter Eötvös, Philippe Manoury, and Jan Müller-Wieland. In October 2015, they gave the world premiere of a new concerto Machine in Echo by Luca Francesconi at the Cologne Philharmonic with the WDR Symphony Orchestra under Peter Rundel. Philipp Manoury’s hourlong work Le temps, mode d’emploi for piano duo and electronics was premiered by Andreas Grau and Götz Schumacher in 2014. The GrauSchumacher Piano Duo’s keen ability to conceive carefully considered programmes and the diversity of their musical interests are also evident in their numerous recordings which appear, among others, in their own series on Neos Music. Their album of Stockhausen’s Mantra won awards from Le Monde de la Musique and Diapason. Gramophone selected their CD Visions de l’Amen, featuring works by Messiaen and Schütz/Kurtág, as Editor’s Choice. The duo has also made critically acclaimed recordings of Luciano Berio’s orchestral works and Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps. Their Concerti series with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, includes, to date, Concerti I (Mozart, Bartók, Liszt) and Concerti II (Liszt/Heucke, Bach, Stravinsky).