“As a musical virtuoso, Markus Becker is unbeatable – an intelligent creator of soulful musical portraits.” Eleonore Büning, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Born in 1963 in Osnabrück, Markus Becker has convinced audiences and critics alike as a highly formative interpreter of piano literature from Bach to Rihm, an eminent artist on the international scale who is noted for his original programming choices. Exceptionally among classical pianists, he also stands out as a virtuoso jazz improviser.
Becker makes regular appearances at the Ruhr Piano Festival, the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival and the Kissingen Summer Festival. Markus Becker has played with orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, RSB Berlin, the radio symphony orchestras of the NDR, WDR and SWR in Germany, and the BBC Welsh Orchestra under such conductors as Claudio Abbado, Howard Griffiths, Michael Sanderling, and Thierry Fisher. Becker’s chamber music partners include Albrecht Mayer, Nils Mönkemeyer, Adrian Brendel, Igor Levit, Sharon Kam and Alban Gerhardt.
He studied with Prof. Karl-Heinz Kämmerling and received additional crucial guidance for many years from Alfred Brendel. Since 1993, he has been a professor at the Hanover Academy of Music, Theatre and Media, where he supervises a class of pianists and chamber ensembles, oversees the Masters Degree department, and directs the Chamber Music Institute.
With his CD recordings, Becker is the three-time winner of the ECHO-Klassik award as well as the German Critics Choice Award, along with a number of further distinctions from the international music press (Gramophone, Fono Forum, Klassik Heute, BBC Music Magazine, American Record Guide).
Becker‘s recording of Max Reger’s complete piano works on 12 CDs (Thorofon) is already considered legendary. Fono Forum‘s assessment of this encyclopaedic feat: “One of the rare and truly major achievements of German piano artistry in the past 50 years.” He received an OPUS award for his live recorded Reger piano concerto.